"Not much," said Noel cheerily. "If I'm alive and kicking, I shall want you all the more. No!" He caught himself up sharply. "I don't mean that!

I couldn't want you more. Ill or well, I should want you just the same.

I only meant--" his voice grew subtly softer, he spoke with great tenderness, his lips moving against her forehead--"I only meant that 'the desert were a paradise, if thou wert there, if thou wert there.'"

She raised her head quickly. There were tears in her eyes. "Noel, how strange that you should say that!"

"Say what, dear?"

"That old song," she said rather incoherently. "It--it has memories for me--memories that hurt."

"What memories?" he asked.

But she could not tell him, and he pa.s.sed the matter by.

The man in the conservatory drew back with his hands deep in his pockets, and went back by the way he had come.

CHAPTER XXVI

A FOOL'S ERRAND

Dr. Jim's expectations, so far as Olga was concerned, were fulfilled.

When he went back to Weir, she remained in town with Nick and Muriel.

But he did not go back alone. Will, Daisy, and Peggy went with him.

Daisy's love for Dr. Jim was almost as great as her love for Nick, and Will had spent his boyhood under his care.

There was a cottage close to the doctor's house which Daisy had tenanted seven or eight years before when she had been obliged to come Home for her health and Will had been left behind in India. Dr. Jim had managed to secure this cottage a second time, and here they were soon installed with all the joy of exiles in an English spring.

"But we are not going to forego the honeymoon," Will said on their first evening, as he and Daisy stood together in the ivy-covered porch.

She laughed--that little laugh of hers half-gay, half-sad, that seemed like a reminiscence of more mirthful days. "Isn't this romantic enough for you?"

He slipped his arm about her waist. "I'm not altogether sure that I did right to let you come here," he said.

"Oh, nonsense!" She leaned her head against him with a very loving gesture. "I am not so morbid as that. I love to be here, and close to dear old Jim. He hasn't altered a bit. He is just as rugged--and as sweet--as ever."

Will laughed. "How you women, do love a masterful man!"

"Oh, not always," said Daisy. "There are certain forms of mastery in a man which to my mind are quite intolerable. Max Wyndham for instance!"

"What! You've still got your knife into him? I'm sorry for the man myself," said Will. "It must be--well, difficult, to say the least of it, to see his brother come home in possession of his girl and to keep smiling."

"He doesn't care!" said Daisy scathingly. "Geniuses haven't time to be human."

"I wonder," said Will.

He knew, and had never ceased to regret, his wife's share in the accomplishment of Max's discomfiture; and he fancied that secretly, her antipathy notwithstanding, she had begun to regret it also.

He changed the subject, and they went on to talk of Noel.

"Olga tells me that they think of operating next Sunday," Daisy said.

"How anxious she will be, poor girl! I am thankful she has Nick and Muriel to take care of her. It has been a terrible time for her all through."

"Poor child!" said Will compa.s.sionately.

He shrewdly suspected that the time that lay ahead of Olga would be harder to face than any she had yet experienced.

Olga herself had already begun to realize that. Noel's refusal to consider her suggestion had surprised and disappointed her. She had not antic.i.p.ated his refusal, though she fully understood it and respected him for it. But it made matters infinitely more difficult for her. She longed for the time when Max's part should be done and he should have pa.s.sed finally out of her life. Not that he intruded upon her in any way. He scarcely so much as glanced in her direction; but his very presence was a perpetual trial to her. She had a feeling that the green eyes were watching continually for some sign of weakness, even though they never looked her way.

Nick was a great comfort to her in those days, but she felt that even he did not wholly grasp the difficulties of the situation. He supported her indeed, but he did not realize precisely where lay the strain. And it was the same with Dr. Jim. He had accepted her engagement without demur after a gruff enquiry as to whether she loved the fellow. But he had not asked for any details, and had made no reference to her former engagement. She supposed that he found out all he wanted to know on this subject from Nick; and she was grateful for his forbearance, albeit, after a woman's fashion, slightly hurt by it.

She had not, however, much time for reflection of any sort during those first days in town. Noel occupied all her thoughts.

On the day before that fixed for the operation, he went into a private nursing-home. He was extremely cheery over all the preparations, and made himself exceedingly popular with his nurses before he had been more than a few hours in the place.

Even Max was somewhat surprised by the boy's fund of high spirits, and Sir Kersley openly expressed his admiration.

"You Wyndhams are a very remarkable family," he said to Max that night.

Max smiled sardonically in recognition of the compliment. "But the boy has more backbone than I thought," he admitted. "I don't think he will give us much trouble after all, thanks to Olga."

"Ah!" Sir Kersley said. "You think this is due to her?"

"In a great measure," said Max.

Sir Kersley's face was grave. "I am afraid the strain is telling upon her," he said.

"You think she looks ill?" Max shot the question with none of his customary composure.

"No, not actually ill," Sir Kersley said, without looking at him. "But she is too thin in my opinion, and she looks to me very highly strung."

"She always was," said Max.

"Yes; well, she mustn't have a nervous break-down if we can prevent it,"

said Sir Kersley gently.

"No," Max agreed curtly. "She has got to keep up for Noel's sake."

That seemed to be his main idea just then--his brother's welfare. Very resolutely he kept his mind fixed, with all the strength of which it was capable, upon that one object, and he was impatient of every distraction outside his profession.

Late that night he went round for a last look at Noel, and was told by a smiling nurse that he had "gone to sleep as chirpy as a cricket." He went in to see him, and found him slumbering like an infant. The pulse under Max's fingers was absolutely normal, and an odd smile that had in it an element of respect touched Max's grim lips. Certainly the boy had grit.

The first sound he heard when he arrived at the home on the following day was Noel's heartiest laugh. He was enjoying a joke with one of the nurses who was Irish herself and extremely gay of heart. But the moment Max entered, he sobered and asked for Olga.

Olga was in the building with Nick, but they had thought it advisable to keep visitors away from him on the morning of the operation. Noel, however, was absolutely immovable on the point, refusing flatly to proceed until he had seen her. So for five short minutes Olga was admitted and left alone with him.

More than once during those minutes his cheery laugh made itself heard again. He had a hundred and one things to say, not one of which could Olga ever remember afterwards save the last, when, holding her close to him, he whispered, "And if I don't come out of it, sweetheart, you're to marry another fellow; see? No d.a.m.n' sentimental rot on my account, mind! I never was good enough for you, G.o.d knows! There! Run along!