Page:Walpole - Fortitude.djvu/471

 he paced the little Minstrels' room, with its dusty green chair and its shining floor—“I just can't stand it all over again!”

But every time that he went in to see her—and he was with her continually—made his resistance harder. She didn't speak about it again but he knew that she was always thinking about it.

“She's worrying over something, Westcott—do you happen to know what it is?” the doctor asked him. “It's bad for her. If you can help her about it in any way—”

The strain between them was becoming unbearable. Every day, when he went in to sit with her, they would talk about other things—about everything—but he knew that before her eyes there was that picture of himself up at Scaw House, and of the years passing—and his soul and everything that was fine in him, dying.

He saw her growing daily weaker. Sometimes he felt that he must run away altogether, go up to Scaw House and leave her to die alone; then he knew that that cruelty at any rate was not in him. One day he thought her brutal and interfering, another day it seemed that it was he who was the tyrant. He reminded himself of all the things that she had done for him—all the things, and he could not grant her this one request.

Then he would ask himself what the devil her right was that she should order his life in this way. every day the struggle grew harder.

The tension could not hold any longer—at last it broke.

One evening they were sitting in silence beside her window. The room was in dusk and he could just see her white shadow against the dim blue light beyond the window.

Suddenly she broke down. He could hear her crying, behind her hands. The sound in that grey, silent room was more than he could bear. He went over to her and put his arms round her.

“Norah, Norah, please, please. It's so awfully bad for you, I oughtn't to come if I—”

She pulled herself together. Her voice was quite calm and controlled.