“I think I have to know now,” Christina said, her hands clasped hard on her knee. “Do you think he will have a second stroke?”

“I wish I could tell you. There has been some brain damage, without a doubt. He might go on as he is for years; on the other hand …”

Years! Christina realized she had been thinking in terms of months.

“It may be that you yourself will have to get help. This is a long business, Mrs. Chapman, at best. You must plan for the tiredness of the long-distance runner, and that, perhaps, is what I felt you had better think about, and was chiefly why I wanted to have a little talk.”

There was no time to think or to prepare herself. The chauffeured car she had ordered to drive them back would be there in a few minutes. When the real things in life happen, Christina thought, taking refuge in the ladies’ room for a few moments, there is never time—birth, death, love—we are never prepared. And suddenly she longed terribly for Ellen. There was endurance. She longed for Willard, for the comfort of adversity, so to speak. She was going to have to readjust all her ideas, find the inner rhythm and sustain it somehow. Alone there, leaning against the washbasin, for a second she felt panic flowing in, so that she was dismayed to see that her hand shook. Would she have the strength? And what if the arthritis got worse? Then, she knew in her bones and marrow the strength of Willard, the strength of the old, patient mountain. I can do it, she thought, for if it is true that we have to meet every great event as naked as when we were born, it is also true that courage flows back in a great wave when it is needed.

When Christina and Cornelius were settled comfortably in the limousine, she held his warm hand fast in hers and said, “Lovely to be going home, darling!” And the warmth of expectation made her heart beat fast. “Tell the man to stop off at that florist in Peterborough, will you? Let’s fill the house with plants.”

It was Christina’s way always to latch onto more life as a way of handling any problem. Plants would need care—one more thing to attend to, but the very thought of their secret life around the house set her blood dancing. Cornelius did not answer, but he held her hand very hard in his, as if the separation of twenty-four hours they had just endured had been a long one.