VIII

IN RE AMOR ET AL.


In the course of two weeks or so Duchemin was able to navigate a
wheeled chair, bask on the little balcony outside his bedchamber
windows in the Château de Montalais, and even--strictly against
orders--take experimental strolls.

The wound in his side still hurt like the very deuce at every
ill-considered movement; but Duchemin was ever the least patient of men
unless the will that coerced him was his own; constraint to another's,
however reasonable, irked him to exasperation; so that these falterings
in forbidden ways were really (as he assured Eve de Montalais when, one
day, she caught him creeping round his room, one hand pressed against
the wall for support, the other to his side) in the nature of a sop to
his self-respect.

"You've only got to tell me not to do a thing often enough," he
commented as she led him back to his chair, "to fill me with unholy
desire to do it if I die in the attempt."

"Isn't that a rather common human failing?" she asked, wheeling the
invalid chair through one of the french windows to the balcony.