’What —­ to Naples?  We should have to be off immediately.  If they come by the next ship after the one that brought this letter, they are now only a fortnight from the end of the voyage.  That means —­ allowing for their nine days from Naples to London —­ that we should have to be at Naples in four or five days from now.’

‘Well?  That’s easily managed, isn’t it?’

‘Not by anyone in your state of health,’ replied Harvey gently.

’I am perfectly well!  I could travel night and day.  Why not?  One eats and sleeps as usual.  Besides, are you quite sure They may be longer than you think.  Telegraph to the London office and ask when the Lusitania will reach Naples.’

’If you like.  But, for one thing, it’s quite certain you oughtn’t to travel in less than a week; and then —­ what about Hughie?’

Alma’s face darkened with vexation.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said coldly.  ’I had counted on it; but, of course, that’s nothing.  There’s the baby to be considered first.’

Harvey had never been so near the point of answering his wife in rough, masculine fashion.  This illness of hers had unsettled his happy frame of mind, perturbing him with anxious thoughts, and making confusion of the quiet, reasonable prospect that lay before him only a week or two ago.  He, too, could much have enjoyed the run to Naples and the voyage back, and disappointment taxed his patience.  Irritated against Alma, and ashamed of himself for not being better tempered, he turned and left the room.  A few minutes afterwards he walked to the post-office, where he addressed a telegram of inquiry to the Orient Line people in London.  It was useless, of course; but he might as well satisfy Alma.

The reply telegram was delivered to him as he sauntered about in the garden.  It merely confirmed his calculation; there might possibly be a clear five days before the Lusitania touched at Naples —­ most likely not more than four.  He went into the sitting-room, but Alma was not there; he looked into the study, and found it vacant.  As Ruth happened to pass, he bade her take the telegram to Mrs. Rolfe upstairs.

He had no mind for reading or for any other occupation.  He shut his door, and began to smoke.  In the whiffs curling from his pipe he imagined the smoke of the great steamer as she drove northward from Indian seas; he heard the throb of the engines, saw the white wake.  Naples; the Mediterranean; Gibraltar frowning towards the purple mountains of Morocco; the tumbling Bay; the green shores of Devon; —­ his pulses throbbed as he went voyaging in memory.  And he might start this very hour, but for the child, who could not be left alone to servants.  With something like a laugh, he thought of the people who implored Mary Abbott to relieve them of their burdensome youngsters.  And at that moment Alma opened the door.

Her face, thinned a little by illness, had quite recovered its amiable humour.