Allen. He had been stricken
down by some dreadful form of rheumatism, and three doctors had said
the same thing--that he had brought this calamity upon himself by his
ridiculous, ceaseless tramping after the hounds.
Dale nodded and smiled, or made his face appropriately grave, while
Mavis prattled to him; but truly his mind was occupied only by Norah.
She came in and out of the room, looking pale and limp and resigned;
she knew all about the trunk, and that it was up-stairs and that
already the mistress and Ethel had begun to pack it; she was
submitting to destiny, but out of her soft blue eyes there shot a
glance now and then that made him quiver with pain.
He went out of the house the moment dinner was finished, and kept
moving about, now in the office, now in the yard, never still. Then,
when he was pottering round and round the office for the fiftieth time
in two hours, he heard a footstep, and Norah came--to whisper and
cling to him, to make him kiss her again; to penetrate him with her
ineffable sweetness; to plant the seeds of inextinguishable desire in
the last few cells and fibers of his brain that as yet she had not
reached.
"I don't ast you to stand in th' road when we drive away. I'd rather
not.
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