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there's something wrong somewhere."

Both Susie and Ralph stared at Aggie. That she had admitted to feeling there was something wrong was to them paramount to stating the actual cause, which from their expression could have been some dread disease.

The outcome of the meeting was that Ralph must speak to Donald. But Ralph did not like this idea at all. Donald was a nice chap, none better. He paid little heed to Aggie's opinion of him; women had prejudices against men, it meant nothing. Vaguely he thought Aggie's opin ion of Donald was mixed up in some way with him being a strapping handsome fellow while her own man had been a little titch of a bloke.

A live wire doubtless, but he hadn't been a figure of a man that would attract a woman. Yet he had attracted Aggie, or had she just taken him because she was getting on and chances were few and far between for her at the time? It was a deep question this;

the further you got into it the more muddled you became. He was back to where he started: Aggie was prejudiced.

During the following week Ralph dropped in to Willow Lea and he had a chat with Donald on the quiet, the result of which left him with the impression that Donald, too, was worried about his wife. His manner at first had been stiff and evasive and suggested to Ralph that this was his house and what happened in it was his concern alone. Yet before very long he was admitting that yes, he had been a trifle worried over Grace losing weight and energy during the last few months. But no, he could not give any reason for it. He had added that her happiness was his one concern and he spent his private life solely with that concern.

Ralph's report took the line that Donald was a grand chap, and if there was anything wrong it didn't stem from him. Donald, he said, had suggested a number of times that she see the doctor, but Grace had pooh-pooh ed the idea. However, now he meant to insist.

Later, when Susie and Aggie were alone together, Susie commented knowledgeably, "It's the first year. Things are often difficult, you know, in the first year." She made this remark as though Aggie had never been married, but Aggie let it pass. Donald, true to his word, arranged that Grace saw the doctor; in fact he forestalled any opposition on her part by telling her that Dr. Cooper was coming that very afternoon to look her over. He made this statement with studied casualness across the dinner table and showed no reaction to Grace's defiant rejoinder, "Well, he can go away again; I won't see him. "

"Don't be childish. Grace ... please don't be so childish."

Grace lowered her eyes towards her plate. She had an almost uncontrollable desire to jump up and beat her fist on the table and yell at him, "I don't want a doctor, you know I don't need a doctor, you know what's wrong with

me. " The thought when it reached this point acted as a shock and steadied her, and her mind gabbled hastily, " Oh dear, dear God, don't let me think such things. " She raised her eyes and looked at the crown of his bent head, the hair falling away in shining waves, without a streak of grey anywhere. It looked strong and virile, he looked all strength and virility, and yet ... The heat enveloped her neck, it spread upwards to her face and downwards to her waist and again it brought a feeling of shame to her. In contrition she wanted to spring up and fling herself on him and say, " Kiss me. Oh kiss me, darling.

"

She knew that he would kiss her, he never kept her short of kisses, but they were kisses without fire, bloodless kisses, passionless kisses.

Yes, that was the word:

passionless kisses.

For over three hundred nights she had slept with Donald and his kisses were withering something in her, that something that had been wonderful, beautiful. Its going was stripping the flesh from her bones; she had lost eighteen pounds in weight in the last few months.

This thing that was dying in her had the symptoms of a disease, and she felt, and not hysterically or morbidly but knowledgeably, that she could die of it; if she didn't do something soon she could die of it.

Yet the cure did not lie in her hands, it lay in his.

She watched him now as he excused himself and rose from the table, and he turned his back to her as he said, "You'll remember that I go into Durham this afternoon for the meeting. I don't know what time I'll be back, maybe about seven. It's a glorious day, perhaps you'll feel like a walk after seeing the doctor."

She heard her own voice saying quite calmly, "Yes, I think I'll take a walk over the fells."

He was winding his wrist-watch as he said, "But you'll wait until he comes, won't you. Grace?" It was an order put over in the form of a request, and she answered flatly, "Yes, I'll wait until he comes."

It didn't matter whether she saw Dr. Cooper or not, he couldn't do anything for her. David Cooper walked into the house unannounced about three o'clock. He had, over the past few months, been a number of times to Willow Lea to play bridge, and the vicar and Grace had visited his home a few times.

These were social visits, return courtesy visits, when everyone was on his best behaviour, when it would have been practically impossible for a doctor or even a psychiatrist to get underneath the facade, yet he knew things weren't right with the vicar's wife. To him she was a high-spirited girl who was being clamped down. She wanted an outlet; a family would be the solution. That was likely the whole root of her present trouble. He had wanted to ask the vicar about this when he had suggested looking her over, but he found it difficult to talk to him.

There was a reserve that emanated from him, together with his manner of always taking charge of a situation that was very . off-putting. The vicar, the doctor thought wryly to himself, was the man who was always the interviewer and never the interviewed.

"Hello there!" He stood in the centre of the hall calling, his eyes moving between the elegant drawing-room and the stairs, and when Grace appeared at the stair head he said again, "Hello there!"

"Hello," she said, and as she came down the stairs she wagged her finger playfully at him, "Renee is always telling me how busy you are, and this is a sheer waste of time."

"Yes, I think it is myself."

"There you are then, so why bother?"

"Simply because I'm being paid for it. I've got to eat, and a wife to support, and with quads due in two

months' time I just can't afford to turn down offers like this, easy money. Where are you going, upstairs or downstairs? "

"Quads." She had to laugh. Then she turned from him, adding,

"Upstairs, in my lady's chamber I suppose."

Not more than ten minutes later he was putting his stethoscope back into his case and Grace was asking from the dressing-room, "Well, am I going to die and you're afraid to tell me?"

Some seconds passed before he answered and then he said, "There's nothing wrong with your body that I can see ... what's on your mind?"

There was no answer to this, and a few more minutes elapsed before Grace came into the bedroom. She was fastening the belt of her dress and she asked, "What do you mean?"

David Cooper puckered his face up, and, giving an impatient shake of his head, said, "Don't let us stall, Grace. You're worrying about something. Come on, let's have it."

"Worrying?" Her eyebrows moved up in surprise as she stared him full in the face.

"What would I have to worry about?"

"You tell me." He was returning her stare.

"Do you want a family?" He watched her blink, then lower her gaze from him as she said, "Of course I want a family; every woman does at least most do. Is there anything wrong in that?

"

"No, that's definitely the right outlook ... Does Donald want a family?"

"Well ... She turned away.

"Yes ... yes, I suppose so."

He looked at her as she walked towards the window, and said quietly,

"Do you mean to say you've never discussed this?"

"There's been no need, it's understood." In the silence that followed her remark she thought, "Of course it's understood. Love and marriage were for the sole purpose of creating souls, hadn't Donald said that?"

Oh she closed her eyes and chided herself she must stop this way of thinking about Donald.

Dr. Cooper left the matter where it was and came to her side as she stood looking down into the garden, and after a moment he remarked,

"There's old Ben still at it. He's aged since he lost Miss Tupping."

"Has he?" Grace turned to him.

"Of course, I wouldn't know; he looks the same to me as when I first saw him. I like Ben."

"I'm glad you do. He's a funny old fellow but as straight as a die. He had one interest in life and that was his mistress. They were more like father and daughter."

"Father and daughter? I've always been under the impression that Miss Tupping was old."

"Not old as people go, she was only about forty-five."

"Really?"

"Yes. She was under sentence of death when she had this house built, you know, and she started on the garden expecting to give it the last year of her life. The earth repaid her and gave her nine more years.

She was my first patient, and I had to pass sentence on her. And the day she died I found Ben lying on the ground behind the greenhouse crying into the earth. "

Grace made no comment. The picture the doctor conjured up before her was too deep and sad for comment. She looked down on the stooped back of the old man and asked what seemed an irrelevant question.

"Why have you stayed here all these years?"

"Because it's a healthy place."

"Healthy?" She turned her head towards him again, her eyes narrowed.

The way she had repeated the word

healthy conveyed a question which might have been interpreted as having said, "What have doctors to do with healthy places? It was in the unhealthy places, surely, that they were needed."

He lifted his gaze to the beech that bordered the lawn and replied,

"Renee's had T.B. She went down with it the first year we were married."

Again she could find no comment. She had never guessed that Renee had been ill, she looked strong and robust and so boisterously happy now that she was having her first child after ten years of marriage.

Renee had infected her with all the excitement about the coming baby.

That was until the last few weeks, when she had come to think of her new friend with something that could only be called envy. But now she was filled with contrition and not a little shame. Renee with T.

B.

and Ben lying on the ground crying. Why had David told her these things to take her mind off herself? Well, whatever his reason it had certainly achieved something, for she felt better, not so deflated.

She had a sudden longing to be alone, to make new resolutions to herself, resolutions concerning patience and understanding, resolutions to think less about her self and her own feelings and more about .

Donald and his needs. But what were his needs? This last was flung at her from a section of her mind that had;

become surprisingly analytical in the last month. This] section would tear things apart and present them to| her and say, "Stop hoodwinking yourself." Once it had| said, "Tell Aunt Aggie," and she cried at it,

"What!| Do you think I'm mad?" This section was becoming! rather frightening, for it was taking on a permanency^! and almost creating another personality, so much so that| she referred to it as a separate person, at times saying | to herself, "Take no notice." Once it had frightened herj by saying, "Aunt Aggie was right, you know. He didn't want the actual money, just the things the money could buy. Look at what he's had lately, that rigging out of the choir boys, the new hassocks, chairs for the church hall, and now he's touting for the five hundred to close the subscriptions for the screen. Well, I'll see him in--' " Shss! Shss! " she admonished the voice that was an echo of her father's.

"What are you going to do with yourself this afternoon?" said the doctor.

"I thought of having a walk on the fells."

"Good idea. The higher you get, the better the air. Walk until you're tired. How are you sleeping?"

"Not too well."

"I'll send up some tablets for you, just enough for two or three nights. It's a habit you know, this sleeping business."

"Everything's a habit."

He was at the door now and he turned and looked at her for a moment, then nodded and said with a smile, "Yes, you're right there; even living is just a series of habits."

The doctor gone. Grace went upstairs again and changed her shoes and picked up a coat. Then she crossed the landing to the storeroom. A door from this room led to an outside staircase which had two purposes: that of a fire escape and an easy means of carrying the fruit into the house. This side of the house, which was the back, was accessible to the orchard. Last year, under Ben's direction, she had packed the fruits away.

As she passed the greenhouses she hailed Ben, and he came to the door and, looking from her light coat to the sky, he said, "You makin' for the fells, ma'am?"

"Yes, Ben."

"Ah well then, I wouldn't go far."

"No?" She looked at him in surprise.

"And it such a beautiful day?"

"Aye, yes now. Be different in an hour or so's time. Look over there."

He pointed over the top of the trees to a small group of harmless-looking clouds, and he added, "That's a sure sign. Bet you what you like we have rain afore we have tea."

"Oh, don't say that, Ben."

"I do, ma'am, so be careful."

"I will, Ben, but I'll be back before tea."

"Do that, ma'am, do that." He nodded and gave her what was to him a smile.

She let herself out through the gate, and within a few minutes was in the wood taking the path that she had first come to know when she had walked behind Andrew Maclntyre.

It was strange, she sometimes thought, that she had seen Andrew Maclntyre twice on that one day and only twice since. The first time was on the road above the village. He was in a field which was somewhat higher than the road and his head was on the level with Adelaide Toole's as she sat on her horse. They were both laughing and she remembered that they looked young and happy. She remembered also that after seeing them she was left with a feeling of loneliness, not because they looked and sounded happy but, strangely, because they were young. Adelaide was her own age, yet she had felt old enough on that day to be her mother, for it was a day following a night when she had cried herself to sleep. Adelaide had greeted her cheerily on that occasion, but Andrew Maclntyre had not spoken, he had merely inclined his ;