Chapter 26

The doctor rode up the climbing moorland road the next morning and paid
a long visit to his patient. He was not portentous in manner and he did
not confine his conversation to the subject of symptoms. He however
included something of subtle cross examination in his friendly talk. The
girl's thinness, her sometimes panting breath and the hollow eyes made
larger by the black ring of her lashes startled him on first sight of
her. He found that the smallness of her appetite presented to Dowie a
grave problem.

"I'm trying to coax good milk into her by degrees. She does her best.
But she can't eat." When they were alone she said, "I shall keep her
windows open and make her rest on her sofa near them. I shall try to get
her to walk out with me if her strength will let her. We can go slowly
and she'll like the moor. If we could stop the awful crying in the
night-- It's been shaking her to pieces for weeks and weeks-- It's the
kind that there's no checking when it once begins. It's beyond her poor
bit of strength to hold it back. I saw how hard she tried--for my sake.
It's the crying that's most dangerous of all."

"Nothing could be worse," the doctor said and he went away with a grave
face, a deeply troubled man.

When Dowie went back to the Tower room she found Robin standing at a
window looking out on the moorside. She turned and spoke and Dowie saw
that intuition had told her what had been talked about.

"I will try to be good, Dowie," she said. "But it comes--it comes
because--suddenly I know all over again that I can never _see_ him any
more. If I could only _see_ him--even a long way off! But suddenly it
all comes back that I can never _see_ him again--Never!"

Later she begged Dowie not to come to her in the night if she heard
sounds in her room.

"It will not hurt you so much if you don't see me," she said. "I'm used
to being by myself. When I was at Eaton Square I used to hide my face
deep in the pillow and press it against my mouth. No one heard. But no
one was listening as you will be. Don't come in, Dowie darling. Please
don't!"

All she wanted, Dowie found out as the days went by, was to be quiet and
to give no trouble. No other desires on earth had been left to her. Her
life had not taught her to want many things. And now--:

"Oh! please don't be unhappy! If I could only keep you from being
unhappy--until it is over!" she broke out all unconsciously one day. And
then was smitten to the heart by the grief in Dowie's face.

That was the worst of it all and sometimes caused Dowie's desperate hope
and courage to tremble on the brink of collapse. The child was thinking
that before her lay