1

only those who have tended their loved ones through long illnesses know how at such times hour slides into hour, eventless save for the notches on the temperature-chart, for the slight recoveries or the slight relapses of the patient, for the doctor's cautious warnings or the nurse's hopeful cheeriness; how wary nights are but the interludes between weary days.

but night after night at daffadillies, while her watchers slept, unwearied and warier than they, julia's brain clocked away its eventful hours; and dawn after wakeful dawn her weary hands added their carefully-hidden sheets to the pile of penciled manuscript in the leather-lined basket.

"nurse," she used to say of a morning, "i haven't slept quite as well as usual. after i've had my breakfast i think a little doze would do me good." after lunch, too, she liked to doze, and sometimes even after tea. "it's the best thing for her," said nurse. "she's getting better. quite soon she'll be able to get up."

and indeed to all of them, not only to nurse, but to smithers and mrs. sanderson, to aliette and to ronnie, who came down every week-end with better and better news of the work for which john cartwright had briefed him, it seemed as though eventually she must get well. already she talked of returning to bruton street for the autumn, of wintering on the riviera. "that hemorrhage," she pronounced, "was a blessing in disguise. this rest is doing me the good in the world. i feel like a two-year-old."

her assumed high spirits deceived everybody. even sir heron baynet, who motored down one evening, felt the slender chance possible. "let her get up," he told aliette over dinner. "let her come downstairs if she feels like it."

but julia, on that first visit, refused to get up. she and she alone at daffadillies knew, with that mysterious prescience of the doomed, that death had only consented to stand off for a period; that only by husbanding every ounce of her strength could she hope to run the full race with him. so far, in that race, she was well ahead. but inevitably there would be setbacks, stumbles and faintings, when death would close up his distance.

it was a fascinating race, yet terrible--this secret course which she and her pencil ran nightly, for her son's sake, against the ultimate doom. times came when she tasted the very foreknowledge of victory; times when despondency took her by the shrunken throat, when it seemed as though not even the supremest effort of her pencil could outrun those cellules of consumption, those tiny implacable burrowers into the shrinking lung-tissue, which spored with every breath she drew.

once for twenty-four whole hours she relapsed into black despair. "man's law"--so alive through so many wonderful nights--was dead in her brain. her body, too, was dying. she would perish, leaving her sword unforged, ronnie's gordian knot unsevered.

then, and then only, did julia cavendish decide to get up.

"i feel i need some distraction," she told sir heron on his next visit. "a little literary work. it'll take my mind off things. just a few rough notes for a new book."

the physician, after much protest, yielded; and next afternoon julia, duly dressed by the adoring smithers and helped to a cushioned chair at the window by a proud nurse, sent for aliette, who came bringing a great armful of flowers from the garden, and--aliette gone--for mrs. sanderson, to whom, under pledge of secrecy and with the threat of instant dismissal should the secret be revealed, she confided the penciled contents of her manuscript-box.

2

may drifted into june. forty miles away london seethed with strikes, with rumors of a general election, and with hector brunton's viciously victorious prosecution of three fraudulent bank directors. at daffadillies brooded peace.

once more, typed, "man's law" grew alive. once more, by daylight now, julia ran her race with death. from half-past ten to half-past one she would sit at her desk by the open window--resentful of the faintest noise, of the slightest interruption, resentful even of the medicines which kept those tiny cellules at bay. at half-past one would come mrs. sanderson, her face an unhappy mask; then lunch; and, lunch over, sleep. every afternoon nurse and smithers would carry the invalid down the wide staircase to take tea with aliette and ponto, either in the book-shelved morning-room, or under the big cedar, whose branches just shadowed the base-line of the tennis-court.

at those tea-parties julia was curiously inquisitive. habitually she would steer conversation into personal channels, putting question after question to aliette--about her marriage with hector, about her family, about her elopement; till it seemed to the younger woman, shrinking from the frankness of those questions, as though the elder were striving to probe every secret of her life. but the probing was never unkindly; and after julia had retired to her room, aliette, lonely in the hush of sussex sunsets that splashed warm gold on the gabled brown of the great house, mused much for love of this marvelously valiant old lady whose very valiance had beaten down death.

for actually, listening to the courage in julia's voice, it was impossible to imagine that voice forever silent. even the second hemorrhage, so slight that only the patient divined its full significance, failed to dissipate aliette's confidence.

those nights, hector's wife dreamed no more of hector. her dreams were all of ronnie; of ronnie, solitary from monday night to friday in the ridiculous flat where caroline staley still tended his sparse requirements; of ronnie, very loving, very confident of ultimate success.

latterly more than one important case--cases that brought publicity rather than fees--had been put in ronnie's way; and julia, reading his name in the papers, would gloat a little, seeing him already famous.

with her son, too, whenever he visited them, julia had grown curiously inquisitive, cross-examining him by the hour together about the work he had done during the week, about the intricacies of the law, about various prominent members of his profession. but when he grew inquisitive about her work, ronnie's mother always pleaded tiredness.

"i'm only playing at things," she used to say. "don't worry me to tell you about my scribbling."

3

the love of a man for a woman, and of a woman for her mate are very blind, very selfish, when compared with the love of a mother for her son. every week, as june flamed into july, as her fears for julia subsided, as the fret of london dwindled into memory and the country wove its soothing spells more and more surely about her consciousness; every week-end when she drove to welcome her lover at the little wayside station which served daffadillies, aliette grew more and more radiant, more and more akin to the woman of a year ago, the woman whose kisses had made paradise of chilworth cove.

here, under the ramparting downs, even as then by the creaming beaches, no harsh breeze from the outer world blew cold to wither the crimson flowers of their lonely happiness. even as at chilworth, no strangers came nigh them. friends, acquaintances, her chagrined family--julia banned them all. the rare visitors from neighboring places had to content their curiosity with leaving cards. the press, satisfied of convalescence, left them undisturbed. miraculously the telephone had ceased to ring.

so while in the high rooms and on the smooth lawns of daffadillies julia worked undistracted, glad that her loved ones, all unknowing what they did, should make high holiday, ronnie and aliette, careless of hector, careless of scandal, careless of ostracism, played man and wife: until, since no word, no thought, no living creature reminded them of reality, their play grew truth and they forgot.

in this, their second honeymoon-time, their second oasis of make-believe in the desert of unmarried life, daffadillies became very "joyous gard," love's castle whence they rode out together--every week-end--on hired nags--into fairyland. southward to the downs or eastward into the weald they rode; and wonderful it was once again to feel even hired horseflesh under them, to recapture for ecstatic moments on swift scurries across sheep-bitten turf the mad inexplicable bliss of their first meeting long and long ago in the hunting-field.

"man, if only hounds ran in summertime," aliette would laugh, and crack a playful whip at ponto lolloping, stern high, beside them.

for if the man and the woman were happy, the huge hound was in his seventh heaven. the great house suited him. his harlequin shape might have been bred to match the gleam and shadows of those stone terraces where--coat silken from the chamois-leather, slitty eyes somnolent yet watchful--he basked in sunshine or bayed the moon till aliette, fearful for the invalid's comfort, drove him to the stables.

in "joyous gard" even dennis and etta were forgotten. how could aliette desire dream-children or any children so long as her present happiness endured? to feel that ronnie still cared, that the mere touch of her hand could still kindle in him the flames of their early passion; to realize herself responsible for his mother's comfort; to know that at last she was being of real service to both of them--these things sufficed the woman.

but the man, subconsciously, still yearned for material success, for the prizes of his profession, for the fame and the emoluments of it. at the woman's touch not only passion but ambition kindled him. if only once, just once, he could meet and defeat, snatch a forensic victory from the "hanging prosecutor."

4

once again, as july sped, julia cavendish stumbled in her race with death. the sustained effort of the past weeks had exhausted her vitality. her brain wearied of its weapon-forging; and for a week she stayed it from the anvil.

but her brain, once released from its secret task, felt the impulse--as is the habit of creative brains--to burden itself with other tasks. the imaginative power, no longer under definite control, grew fearful, painting devils on every wall. she summoned sir heron baynet from london, questioned and cross-questioned him about her disease. "you're a mind-specialist, inter alia?" was one of her questions. "tell me, do you believe that a healthy mind can triumph over an unhealthy body?"

"it depends on the quality of the mind," sir heron humored her. "in your own case, i should say that the sheer will to be cured has done more than all my drugs. but don't overdo the work."

that--since all she now lived for was to bring her work to its conclusion--frightened her but the more. torn between the desire for work and the fear lest, overworking, she should too soon pay the inevitable penalty, she drove her brain once more to the anvil--hammering, hammering, hammering at her sword of the written word till even mrs. sanderson dared to protest with her.

"your business is to type, not to argue," said julia grimly; and once again, openly this time, she began to work o' nights--so that it was a novelist nearer than she had ever been to a nervous breakdown who said to her "daughter-in-law" one afternoon as they took their tea in the book-shelved morning-room overlooking the rain-dripped magnificence of the herbaceous borders: "i wonder if i ought to have my family down. they'll be a frightful nuisance, and i sha'n't be able to scribble while they're here. all the same, one has one's duties----"

"i think your first duty is to get quite well," smiled the "daughter-in-law.''

"perhaps you're right, child." nervously julia's tired mind broached another of its secret anxieties. "and your family? don't you ever feel the need of them?"

"mollie wrote last week," answered aliette, burking the main question.

"yes, but your father, your mother, that other sister of yours? don't you ever wish that they'd see reason; that they knew the exact truth; that somebody could tell them the inside story of your married life?" the questions came abruptly from the shawled figure in the easy chair.

"sometimes. not that the truth would influence mother. mother was a roman catholic, you know, before she married."

"ah! i'd nearly forgotten that. it's important, very important, because----" julia, as though she had said too much, checked herself, leaving the other rather mystified. "still," she went on, "your mother isn't a roman catholic now. she'd forgive you if there were a divorce, if you married my son?"

"yes. i suppose so." the younger woman brushed away the topic. "but mother and i never cared for one another as you and ronnie care. mollie and i were the pals in our family."

"quite so." a sudden plan formulated itself in julia's troubled brain. "it must be lonely for you down here," she said after a pause. "wouldn't you like to have your sister mollie to stay for a week?"

"but wouldn't she be a nuisance?"

"no. i like having young people about me, and besides, i've a reason----"

again, as though fearful of betraying herself, julia checked speech. but the next day and the next, work finished, her mind reverted to its plan.

"we might invite young wilberforce, too," she suggested when ronnie came down on the saturday. "that would make you four for tennis."

"and two for match-making," retorted ronnie, entirely unsuspicious of his mother's real motive.