It will be understood that I do not go out, and then someone--Miss Raeburn or Lady Winterbourne--will take up Marcella and mother her." She spoke with her usual light gentleness, but he was not appeased.
"If you were to talk of _my_ health, it would be more to the purpose," he said, with grim inconsequence.

And raising his heavy lids he looked at her full.
She got up and went over to him.
"Do you feel worse again?
Why will you not change your things directly you come in?
Would you like Dr.Clarke sent for ?" She was standing close beside him; her beautiful hand, for which in their young days it had pleased his pride to give her rings, almost touched him.

A passionate hunger leapt within him.

She would stoop and kiss him if he asked her; he knew that.

But he would not ask her; he did not want it; he wanted something that never on this earth would she give him again.
Then moral discomfort lost itself in physical.
"Clarke does me no good--not an atom," he said, rising.