He was tortured with the thought of all the injuries he might have done her, and he invented more, invented burdens that he had never put upon her to account for her going away from him, with never a word. For three days he lived in this torment, winding about and about from general to particular and back again by the most circuitous route, a _Rundreise_ with the current morality for Baedeker. And every now and then the obsession would stab home to his heart--the hotel door swinging, the flat infidelity. Once, when the pain was so mortal that he could contain himself no longer, he wrote to her at the hotel. He posted the letter. That was on the second day. On the third he was in an agony. No answer came.
On the fourth day a telegram arrived from the Sussex village and an hour later she, brown, healthy, with a grand swing in her walk, a new depth of bosom, a squarer carriage of the shoulders; a rich bloom on her. She kissed his cheek.
He stared and stared at her. He looked for change in her.
"I'll take my things off, and we'll have some tea."
She left him. He stood at the head of the little stairs leading down to her apartments, and he trembled and was near weeping. In her room he could hear her singing to herself, happily, blithely as a bird, with a full note that caught at his heart. She seemed to sing no song, but a melody, young and joyous with a full summer gaiety. The sun shone through the staircase window upon his hand where he clutched the balustrade. He was gripping it so tight that the veins stood out and the skin on his knuckles was white. A tear fell on his hand and he looked down at it. It was a plump, podgy, puckered middle-aged hand.
He whisked back into his room as he heard her door open.
They had tea, and he could not take his eyes off her. She thought he looked ill and pulled down. On his desk she saw the pile of his papers.
"You've been writing," she said. "You've been overdoing it. It's never safe to leave a man alone."
"Yes," he replied. "I have written a good deal."
"No. I doubt if it will ever be finished now."
She began to talk of the theater. She had been wired for to resume her part, as her understudy was proving unsatisfactory. Further she had had two offers. One to appear in a new musical comedy, the other of a part in a play to be produced at a little "intellectual" theater for eight matinées. She felt inclined, she said, to accept both. It would mean very hard work, but it would be experience, and it was flattering to be noticed by the superior persons of the stage. And she asked his advice. He thought it might be too much for her to have so much rehearsing and to play in the evening as well. That she brushed aside. She was feeling splendid, strong enough to act a whole play.