But these things come to sudden ends sometimes. Sprains, however severe, have an awkward knack of getting well. Swellings subside from inanition, and doctors insist for their credit's sake that the stick or ready arm be relinquished. Certainly a respite or a relapse--call it which you will--is not impossible with care, but it is brief. A singular shooting pain, not easily located with exactness, but somewhere in the neighborhood of the calf, has been found useful; and a strange rigidity of the tendon Achilles in certain positions may gain a day or two. But at last not even these will avail, and the doubly injured one must out and away from among the rose leaves. Twice Maitland fixed his departure for the following morning, and each time when pressed to stay gave way, after so feeble, so ludicrous a resistance, if it deserved the name, that Agnes scarcely concealed her grimace, and Joan looked another way. She did not add anything to the others' hospitable entreaties. If she guessed what made Maggie's good-night kiss so fervent and clinging, she made no sign and offered no opening.
In the garden next morning, Maitland taxed her with her neutrality. It was wonderful how his sense of humor had become developed at Blore.
"I thought that you did not need so much pressure as to necessitate more than four people's powers of persuasion being used," she answered, in the same playful spirit. "And besides, now you are well enough, must you not leave?"
"And go back to your own way of life? It is a month since you saw the latest telegrams, and there is a French company at the Gaiety, I learn from the _Standard_. We have interests and duties, though you were so hard of belief about them, at Blore, but you have none."
She shook her head. "No duties, at any rate."
"And so you think," he asked, his eyes fixed upon her changing features, "that I should go back to my old way of life--of a century ago?"
"Of course you must!" But she was not so rude as to tell him what a very foolish question this was. Still it was, was it not?
"So I will, or to something like it, and yet very unlike. But not alone. Joan, will you come with me? If I have known you but a month, I have learned to love your truth and goodness and you, Joan, so that if I go away alone, to return to the old life would be bitterly impossible. You have spoiled that; you must make for me a fresh life in its place. Do you remember you told me that when we knew one another we might be better friends? I have come to know you better, but we cannot be friends. We must be something more, more even than lovers, Joan--husband and wife, if you can like me enough."