No answer!
"Oh dear, oh dear! Then I'll telephone to Sheffield for Dr. Carrington, and Dr. Lecky may as well run round straight away."
She was moving to the door, when he said in a hollow tone:
"No!"
She stopped and gazed at him. His face was yellow, blank, and like the face of an idiot.
"Do you mean you'd rather I didn't fetch the doctor?"
"Yes! I don't want him," came the sepulchral voice.
"Oh, but Sir Clifford, you're ill, and I daren't take the responsibility. I must send for the doctor, or I shall be blamed."
A pause: then the hollow voice said:
"I'm not ill. My wife isn't coming back." It was as if an image spoke.
"Not coming back? you mean her ladyship?" Mrs. Bolton moved a little nearer to the bed. "Oh, don't you believe it. You can trust her ladyship to come back."
The image in the bed did not change, but it pushed a letter over the counterpane.
"Read it!" said the sepulchral voice.
"Why, if it's a letter from her ladyship, I'm sure her ladyship wouldn't want me to read her letter to you, Sir Clifford. You can tell me what she says, if you wish."
But the face with the fixed blue eyes sticking out did not change.
"Read it!" repeated the voice.
"Why, if I must, I do it to obey you, Sir Clifford," she said.
And she read the letter.
"Well, I am surprised at her ladyship," she said. "She promised so faithfully she'd come back!"
The face in the bed seemed to deepen its expression of wild, but motionless distraction. Mrs. Bolton looked at it and was worried. She knew what she was up against: male hysteria. She had not nursed soldiers without learning something about that very unpleasant disease.
She was a little impatient of Sir Clifford. Any man in his senses must have known his wife was in love with somebody else, and was going to leave him. Even, she was sure, Sir Clifford was inwardly absolutely aware of it, only he wouldn't admit it to himself, If he would have admitted it, and prepared himself for it; or
