"He has a tiresome malady, I understand."

"What malady?"

"Doesn't he suffer very much from nervous dyspepsia?"

She looked at him with irony, which changed almost instantly into serious
reflection. But the irony returned.

"Now and then he has a touch of it," she said. "Very few of us don't have
something. But we have to go on, and we do go on, nevertheless."

"I think a wise doctor would probably order your husband away," said
Malling, though Mr. Harding's departure was the last thing he desired
just then.

"Even if he were ordered away, I don't know that he would go."

"Why not?"

"I don't think he would. I don't feel as if he could get away," she said,
with what seemed to Malling a sort of odd obstinacy. "In fact, I know
he's not going," she abruptly added. "I have an instinct."

Malling felt sure that she had considered, perhaps long before he had
suggested it, this very project of Mr. Harding's departure for a while
for rest, and that she had rejected it. Her words recalled to his mind
some other words of her husband, spoken in Mr. Harding's study: "Surely
one ought to get out of such an atmosphere, to get out of it, and to keep