"What of that?" asked Fleda. "Oh, she thinks they're all right!"!

"So much that they're all, and that she can let everything else absolutely depend upon them?" Mrs. Gereth stared. "Do you mean he's at Waterbath? Well, that's your own affair. I can bear it if you can."

"I knew what I was about," said Owen. "It didn't strike me that she had the least right to come down on us that way and ask for explanations." "Write to him that you must see him again," said Mrs. Gereth. "No. I'm tired of them: I'm not tired of you. This is the way for you to feel most how much I rest on you." Fleda had a compunction, wondering as they continued to stroll whether it was right after all to leave her. She believed, however, that if the flame might for the moment burn low, it was far from dying out; an impression presently confirmed by the way Mrs. Gereth went on: "But one's fatigue is nothing. The idea under which one worked kept one up. For you I could—I can still. Nothing will have mattered if she's not there."