and, when, half charmed, half terrified, she turned and called to him
by name, he merely said--

"My dear, I felt the loneliness--suddenly realized it--the alien
desolation of that tree, set here upon our little lawn in England when
all her Eastern brothers call her in sleep." And the answer seemed so
queer, so "un-evangelical," that she waited in silence till he slept
again. The poetry passed her by. It seemed unnecessary and out of place.
It made her ache with suspicion, fear, jealousy.

The fear, however, seemed somehow all lapped up and banished soon
afterwards by her unwilling admiration of the rushing splendor of her
husband's state. Her anxiety, at any rate, shifted from the religious to
the medical. She thought he might be losing his steadiness of mind a
little. How often in her prayers she offered thanks for the guidance
that had made her stay with him to help and watch is impossible to say.
It certainly was twice a day.

She even went so far once, when Mr. Mortimer, the vicar, called, and
brought with him a more or less distinguished doctor--as to tell the
professional man privately some symptoms of her husband's queerness. And
his answer that there was "nothing he could prescribe for" added not a
little to her sense of unholy bewilderment. No doubt Sir James had never
been "consulted" under such unorthodox conditions before. His sense of
what was becoming naturally overrode his acquired instincts as a skilled
instrument that might help the race.

"No fever, you think?" she asked insistently with hurry, determined to
get something from him.