The clink of china hurriedly moved in the next room had ceased. Adriance came to the bedside, leaning over to slip his arm carefully under the pillow and raise the girl's head. In his other hand he held a cup of hot tea, the only medicine he knew.
All his wife's heart melted toward him in his helpless helpfulness. Suddenly she remembered that he had come back to her from that meeting. He had seen the invincible Lucille, yet had returned to glorious content with his wife. The ordeal she long had foreseen and dreaded was over. She opened her eyes and looked up at him quietly.
He looked like a man who had been ill, and his gaze devoured her, enfolded her.
"What was it?" he asked unsteadily. "What is it?"
"Anthony, why did you not tell me that you met Mrs. Masterson?" she put her quiet question. "Why did you leave me to hear it from Michael?"
Startled, he still continued to look down into her eyes with no confusion in his own.
"I suppose I should have told you," he frankly admitted. "But it wasn't of any importance, and I--well, I cut such a poor figure that I dodged exhibiting it to you. The woman caught me on the Avenue and fairly bullied me into a tea-room, with my collar wilted and oily hands. I think she did it out of pure malice, too, for she had nothing to say, after all. But--surely _that_ did not make you ill, Elsie?"
"You never thought that I might mind your going?"
"Why?" he asked simply. "What is it to us? You don't, do you?"
She put up her hands and clasped them behind his head.
"Set down the tea," she laughed, tears in her mockery, "or we will spill it between us. Did you think me an inhuman angel, dear darling? No, I don't mind; but I did."
"You keep remembering who Maît' Raoul Galvez raised," she warned, her lips against his. "I'm mighty jealous, man!"
"But I love you," he stammered clumsily. "That woman--she looked like a vixen! Poor Fred!"
Their first misunderstanding was passed, and left no shadow. By and by they drank the cold tea together, and Elsie persuaded her nurse to go to the factory as usual.
"I was not sick, just full of badness," she conscientiously explained. "Although it might not have happened if I had been altogether just the same as usual, Anthony."