He was a proud man, and his pride sustained him in this dark and incomprehensible crisis of their life together. With extraordinary self-control, born of his pity for her, he refrained from reproach or any violent sign of his inward rage and pain; but often a sort of primitive savagery in him ached to smite the eyes that mocked him with their false tenderness, and there were moments when he longed to take her by the throat and kill her, while he kissed the lips she withheld from him.
Life was in fact an active wearing misery to them both.
He was once more sound in health. His plan was to go softly under the stars for awhile and perform no serious operations, but he felt quite equal to taking up the ordinary threads of his practice again. His main worry was Val. Her resolution to go to Europe meant not only the _bouleversement_ of home and hospital, but of their whole future life. He was far from wishing to keep a woman who did not care for him tied to his side. But he retained a kind of ungrounded hope that after she rested awhile from the heavy strain his illness had entailed, she would gradually return to her old, ardent generous self and give up the fantastic plan for leaving America. He saw very well that she must go somewhere. Her physique was in rags. She had grown so fragile that her bones almost pierced her skin, and her face was the face of a ghost. His heart was wrung with pity for her. None more anxious than he that she should go away and rest, and to use his last cent for the purpose if need be. What hurt was that she should want to go so far and for so long; that she should have planned it all so eagerly while he lay sick, and hold fast to it so resolutely now that he was well. Once so pliant to all his wishes she was firm as a rock in this, and he had no will to oppose her. His heart was always tender for the sick, and it was plain to the dullest eye that she was a sick woman. He schooled himself to believe at last that her strange coldness was a result of this sickness. He had half-killed her with overwork and worry, small wonder that she hated him! It was not treachery, not the quitting spirit, but the whim of a sick and weary child. The generous thing was to bear with her unreproaching, and at whatever cost to himself, humour her wish. It was in this spirit that he told her to pack up, and he would, when she gave the word, take steamer tickets for her and the children. He arranged for Mary, the Wicklow maid, to accompany her too. He would have offered to go himself, though he knew the hospital needed him, but that he could feel her projecting a very stone wall of opposition to such a purpose. He had almost to insist on her taking Haidee at the last, for she seemed now to hang back from the idea, looking at him with strange eyes when he said that Haidee would be better in her care than any one else's. How could he know that his delirium had betrayed to her old doubts of his, which in sane moments he would himself have been ashamed of harbouring, and which had long since been banished from his mind by her bright gallantry. He had come to believe, indeed, that Haidee was better with Val than with any one. Further, he did not in the least want Haidee with him. She would not for one moment comfort him for the loss of Bran and his wife. He had only said the thing in that first bitterness of heart. Rather he looked upon Haidee's going as a safeguard to his own happiness, for if Val's illness grew worse, the child would be able to give him the news at once. Mary was going only for the voyage, and on arriving at Southampton would go straight on to Ireland where her mother needed her.