'I think you've a great deal yet,' replied Mrs. White, not wishing to discourage her.

'And how yellow I am too!'

To this Mrs. White mumbled something that was inaudible, and Kate thought suddenly of her rouge-pot and hare's-foot. Her 'make-up,' and all her little souvenirs of Dick, lay securely packed away in an old band-box.

'Mrs. White,' she said, 'might I ask you to get me a jug of hot water?'

When the woman left the room, everything was spread hurriedly over the toilet-table. To see her, one would have thought that the call-boy had knocked at the door for the second time. A thin coating of cold cream was passed over the face and neck; then the powder-puff changed what was yellow into white, and the hare's-foot gave a bloom to the cheeks. The pencil was not necessary, her eyebrows being by nature dark and well-defined. Then all disappeared again into the band-box, a drain was taken out of the bottle whilst she listened to steps on the stairs, and she had just time to get back to her chair when the doctor entered. She felt quite prepared to receive him. Mrs. White, who had come up at the same time, locked uneasily around; and, after hesitating about the confines of the room, she put the water-jug on the rosewood cabinet, and said:

'I think I'll leave you alone with the doctor, ma'am; if you want me you'll ring.'

Mr. Hooper was a short, stout man, with a large bald forehead, and long black hair; his small eyes were watchful as a ferret's, and his fat chubby hands were constantly laid on his knee-caps.

'I met Mrs. White's servant in the street,' he said, looking at Kate as if he were trying to read through the rouge on her face, 'so I came at once. Mrs. White, with whom I was speaking downstairs, tells me that you're suffering from a pain in your side.'

'Yes, doctor, on the right side; and I've not been feeling very well lately.'

'Is your appetite good? Will you let me feel your pulse?'

'No, I've scarcely any appetite at all—particularly in the morning. I can't touch anything for breakfast.'

'Don't you care to drink anything? Aren't you thirsty?'

Kate would have liked to have told a lie, but fearing that she might endanger her life by doing so, she answered:

'Oh yes! I'm constantly very thirsty.'

'Especially at night-time?'

It was irritating to have your life read thus; and Kate felt angry when she saw this dispassionate man watching the brandy-bottle, which she had forgotten to put away.

'Do you ever find it necessary to take any stimulant?'

Grasping at the word 'necessary,' she replied:

'Yes, doctor; my life isn't a very happy one, and I often feel so low, so depressed as it were, that if I didn't take a little something to keep me up I think I should do away with myself.'

'Your husband is an actor, I believe?'

'Yes; but he's at present up in Manchester, producing a new piece. I'm on the stage, too. I've been playing a round of leading parts in the provinces, but since I've been in London I've been out of an engagement.'

'I just asked you because I noticed you used a little powder, you know, on the face. Of course, I can't judge at present what your complexion is; but have you noticed any yellowness about the skin lately?'

The first instinct of a woman who drinks is to conceal her vice, and although she was talking to a doctor, Kate was again conscious of a feeling of resentment against the merciless eyes which saw through all the secrets of her life. But, cowed, as it were, by the certitude expressed by the doctor's looks and words, she strove to equivocate, and answered humbly that she noticed her skin was not looking as clear as it used to. Dr. Hooper then questioned her further. He asked if she suffered from a sense of uncomfortable tension, fullness, weight, especially after meals; if she felt any pain in her right shoulder? and she confessed that he was right in all his surmises.

'Do tell me, doctor, what is the matter with me. I assure you I'd really much sooner know the worst.'

But the doctor did not seem inclined to be communicative, and in reply to her question he merely mumbled something to the effect that the liver was out of order.

'I will send you over some medicine this evening,' he said, 'and if you don't feel better to-morrow send round for me, and don't attempt to get up. I think,' he added, as he took up his hat to go, 'I shall be able to put you all right. But you must follow my instructions; you mustn't frighten yourself, and take as little of that stimulant as possible.'

Kate answered that it was not her custom to take too much, and she tried to look surprised at the warning. She nevertheless derived a good deal of comfort from the doctor's visit, and during the course of the evening succeeded in persuading herself that her fears of the morning were ill-founded and, putting the medicine that was sent her away for the present, she helped herself from a bottle that was hidden in the upholstery. The fact of having a long letter to write to Dick explaining her conduct, made it quite necessary that she should take something to keep her up; and sitting in her lonely room, she drank on steadily until midnight, when she could only just drag her clothes from her back and throw herself stupidly into bed. There she passed a night full of livid-hued nightmares, from which she awoke shivering, and suffering from terrible palpitations of the heart. The silence of the house filled her with terrors, cold and obtuse as the dreams from which she awakened. Strength to scream for help she had none; and thinking she was going to die, she sought for relief and consolation in the bottle that lay hidden under the carpet. When the drink took effect upon her she broke out into a profuse perspiration, and she managed to get a little sleep; but when her breakfast was brought up about eleven o'clock in the morning, so ill did she seem that the servant, fearing she was going to drop down dead, begged to be allowed to fetch the doctor. But rejecting all offers of assistance, Kate lay moaning in an armchair, unable even to taste the cup of tea that the maid pressed upon her. She consented to take some of the medicines that were ordered her, but whatever good they might have produced was discounted by the constant nip-drinking she kept up during the afternoon. The next day she was very ill indeed, and Mrs. White, greatly alarmed, insisted on sending for Dr. Hooper.

He did not seem astonished at the change in his patient. Calmly and quietly he watched for some moments in silence.

The bed had curtains of a red and antiquated material, and these contrasted with the paleness of the sheets wherein Kate lay, tossing feverishly. Most of the 'make-up' had been rubbed away from her face; and through patches of red and white the yellow skin started like blisters. She was slightly delirious, and when the doctor took her hand to feel her pulse she gazed at him with her big staring eyes and spoke volubly and excitedly.

'Oh! I'm so glad you've come, for I wanted to speak to you about my husband. I think I told you that he'd gone to Manchester to produce a new piece. I don't know if I led you to suppose that he'd deserted me, but if I did I was wrong to do so, for he has done nothing of the kind. It's true that we aren't very happy together, but I dare say that is my fault. I never was, I know, as good a wife to him as I intended to be; but then, he made me jealous and sometimes I was mad. Yes, I think I must have been mad to have spoken to him in the way I did. Anyhow, it doesn't matter now, does it, doctor? But I don't know what I'm saying. Still, you won't mention that I've told you anything. It's as likely as not that he'll forgive me, just as he did before; and we may yet be as happy as we were at Blackpool. You won't tell him, will you, doctor?'

'No, no, I won't,' said Dr. Hooper, quietly and firmly. 'But you mustn't talk as much as you do; if you want to see your husband, you must get well first.'

'Oh yes! I must get well; but tell me, doctor, how long will that take?'

'Not very long, if you will keep quiet and do what I tell you. I want you to tell me how the pain in your side is?'

'Very bad; far worse than when I saw you last. I feel it now in my right shoulder as well.'

'But your side—is it sore when you touch it? Will you let me feel?'

Without waiting for a reply, he passed his hand under the sheet. 'Is it there that it pains you?'

'Yes, yes. Oh! You're hurting me.'

Then the doctor walked aside with the landlady, who had been watching the examination of the patient with anxious eyes. She said:

'Do you think it's anything very dangerous? Is it contagious? Had I better send her to the hospital?'

'No, I should scarcely think it worth while doing that; she will be well in a week, that is to say if she is properly looked after. She's suffering from acute congestion of the liver, brought on by—'

'By drink,' said Mrs. White. 'I suspected as much.'

'You've too much to do, Mrs. White, with all your children, to give up your time to nursing her; I shall send someone round as soon as possible, but, in the meantime, will you see that her diet is regulated to half a cup of beef-tea, every hour or so. If she complains of thirst, let her have some milk to drink, and you may mix a little brandy with it. To-night I shall send round a sleeping-draught.'

'You're sure, doctor, there is nothing catching, for you know that, with all my children in the house——'

'You need not be alarmed, Mrs. White.'

'But do you think, doctor, it will be an expensive illness? for I know very little about her circumstances.'

'I expect she'll be all right in a week or ten days, but what I fear for is her future. I've had a good deal of experience in such matters, and I've never known a case of a woman who cured herself of the vice of intemperance. A man sometimes, a woman never.'

The landlady sighed and referred to all she had gone through during poor Mr. White's lifetime; the doctor spoke confidingly of a lady who was at present under his charge; and, apparently overcome with pity for suffering humanity, they descended the staircase together. On the doorstep the conversation was continued.

'Very well, then, doctor, I will take your advice; but at the end of a week or so, when she is quite recovered, I shall tell her that I've let her rooms. For, as you say, a woman rarely cures herself, and before the children the example would be dreadful.'

'I expect to see her on her feet in about that time, then you can do as you please. I shall call tomorrow.'

Next day the professional nurse took her place by the bedside. The sinapism which the doctor ordered was applied to the hepatic region, and a small dose of calomel was administered.

Under this treatment she improved rapidly; but unfortunately, as her health returned her taste for drink increased in a like proportion. Indeed, it was almost impossible to keep her from it, and on one occasion she tried very cunningly to outwit the nurse, who had fallen asleep in her chair. Waiting patiently until the woman's snoring had become sufficiently regular to warrant the possibility of a successful attempt being made on the brandy-bottle, Kate slipped noiselessly out of bed. The unseen night-light cast a rosy glow over the convex side of the basin, without, however, disturbing the bare darkness of the wall, Kate knew that all the bottles stood in a line upon the chest of drawers, but it was difficult to distinguish one from the other, and the jingling she made as she fumbled amid them awoke the nurse, who divining at once what was happening, arose quickly from her chair and advancing rapidly towards her, said:

'No, ma'am, I really can't allow it; it's against the doctor's orders.'

'I'm not going to die of thirst to please any doctor. I was only going to take a little milk, I suppose there's no harm in that?'

'Not the least, ma'am, and if you'd called me you should have had it.'

It was owing to this fortuitous intervention that when Dr. Hooper called a couple of days after to see his patient he was able to certify to a remarkable change for the better in her. All the distressing symptoms had disappeared; the pain in her side had died away; the complexion was clearer. He therefore thought himself justified in ordering for her lunch a little fish and some weak brandy and water; and to Kate, who had not eaten any solid food for several days, this first meal took the importance of a very exceptional event. Sitting by her bedside Dr. Hooper spoke to her.

'Now, Mrs. Lennox,' he said, 'I want to give you a word of warning. I've seen you through what I must specify as a serious illness; dangerous I will not call it, although I might do so if I were to look into the future and anticipate the development the disease will most certainly take, unless, indeed, you will be guided by me, and make a vow against all intoxicating liquors.'

At this direct allusion to her vice Kate stopped eating, and putting down the fork looked at the doctor.

'Now, Mrs. Lennox, you mustn't be angry,' he continued in his kind way. 'I'm speaking to you in my capacity as a medical man, and I must warn you against the continuous nip-drinking which, of course, I can see you're in the habit of indulging in, and which was the cause of the illness from which you are recovering. I will not harrow your feelings by referring to all the cases that have come under my notice where shame, disgrace, ruin, and death were the result of that one melancholy failing—drink.'

'Oh, sir!' cried Kate, broken-hearted, 'if you only knew how unhappy I've been, how miserable I am, you would not speak to me so. I've my failing, it is true, but I'm driven to it. I love my husband better than anything in the world, and I see him mixed up always with a lot of girls at the theatre, and it sends me mad, and then I go to drink so as to forget.'

'We've all got our troubles; but it doesn't relieve us of the burden; it only makes us forget it for a short time, and then, when consciousness returns to us, we only remember it all the more bitterly. No, Mrs. Lennox, take my advice. In a few days, when you're well, go to your husband, demand his forgiveness, and resolve then never to touch spirits again.'

'It's very good of you to speak to me in this way,' said Kate, tearfully, 'and I will take your advice, The very first day that I am strong enough to walk down to the Strand I will go and see my husband, and if he will give me another trial, he will not, I swear to you, have cause to repent it. Oh!' she continued, 'you don't know how good he's been to me, how he has borne with me. If it hadn't been that he tried my temper by flirting with other women we might have been happy now.'

Then, as Kate proceeded to speak of her trials and temptations, she grew more and more excited and hysterical, until the doctor, fearing that she would bring on a relapse, was forced to plead an engagement and wish her good-bye.

As he left the room she cried after him, 'The first day I'm well enough to go out I'll go and see my husband.'



XXIX

The next few days passed like dreams. Kate's soul, tense with the longing for reconciliation, floated at ease over the sordid miseries that lay within and without her, and enraptured with expectation, she lived in a beautiful paradise of hope.

So certain did she feel of being able to cross out the last few years of her life, that her mind was scarcely clouded by a doubt of the possibility of his declining to forgive her—that he might even refuse to see her. The old days seemed charming to her, and looking back, even she seemed to have been perfect then. There her life appeared to have begun. She never thought of Hanley now. Ralph and Mrs. Ede were like dim shadows that had no concern in her existence. The potteries and the hills were as the recollections of childhood, dim and unimportant. The footlights and the applause of audiences were also dying echoes in her ears. Her life for the moment was concentrated in a loving memory of a Lancashire seashore and a rose-coloured room, where she used to sit on the knees of the man she adored. The languors and the mental weakness of convalescence were conducive to this state of mental exaltation. She loved him better than anyone else could love him; she would never touch brandy again. He would take her back, and they would live as the lovers did in all the novels she had ever read. These illusions filled Kate's mind like a scarf of white mist hanging around the face of a radiant morning, and as she lay back amid the pillows, or sat dreaming by the fireside in the long evenings that were no longer lonely to her, she formed plans, and considered how she should plead to Dick in this much-desired interview. During this period dozens of letters were written and destroyed, and it was not until the time arrived for her to go to the theatre to see him that she could decide upon what she could write. Then hastily she scribbled a note, but her hand trembled so much that before she had said half what she intended the paper was covered with blotched and blurred lines.

'It won't do to let him think I'm drunk again,' she said to herself, as she threw aside what she had written and read over one of her previous efforts. It ran as follows:

'MY DARLING DICK,—

'You will, I am sure, be sorry to hear that I have been very ill. I am now, however, much better; indeed, I may say quite recovered. During my illness I have been thinking over our quarrels, and I now see how badly, how wickedly, I have behaved to you on many occasions. I do not know, and I scarcely dared to hope, that you will ever forgive me, but I trust that you will not refuse to see me for a few minutes. I have not, I assure you, tasted spirits for some weeks, so you need not fear I will kick up a row. I will promise to be very quiet. I will not reproach you, nor get excited, nor raise my voice. I shall be very good, and will not detain you but for a very short time. You will not, you cannot, oh, my darling! deny me this one little request—to see you again, although only for a few minutes.

'Your affectionate wife, 'KATE'

Compared with the fervid thoughts of her brain, these words appeared to her weak and poor, but feeling that for the moment, at least, she could not add to their intensity, she set out on her walk, hoping to find her husband at the theatre.

It was about eight o'clock in the evening. A light, grey fog hung over the background of the streets, and the line of the housetops was almost lost in the morose shadows that fell from a soot-coloured sky. Here and there a chimney-stack or the sharp spire of a church tore the muslin-like curtains of descending mist; and vague as the mist were her thoughts. The streets twisted, wriggling their luminous way through slime and gloom, whilst at every turning the broad, flaring windows of the public-houses marked the English highway. But Kate paid no attention to the red-lettered temptations. Docile and hopeful as a tired animal thinking of its stable, she walked through the dark crowd that pressed upon her, nor did she even notice when she was jostled, but went on, a heedless nondescript—a something in a black shawl and a quasi-respectable bonnet, a slippery stepping-stone between the low women who whispered and the workwoman who hurried home with the tin of evening beer in her hand. Like one held and guided by the power of a dream, she lost consciousness of all that was not of it. Thoughts of how Dick would receive her and forgive her were folded, entangled and broken within narrow limits of time; half an hour passed like a minute, and she found herself at the stage-door of the theatre. Drawing the letter from her pocket, she said to the hall-keeper:

'Will you kindly give Mr. Lennox this letter? Has he arrived yet?'

'Yes, but he's busy for the moment. But,' the man added, as he examined Kate's features narrowly, 'you'll excuse me, I made a mistake; Mr. Lennox isn't in the theatre.'

At that moment the swinging door was thrust open, and the call-boy screamed:

'Mr. Lennox says you're not to let Miss Thomas pass to-night, and if there are any letters for him I'm to take them in.'

'Here's one; will you give it to Mr. Lennox?' said Kate, eagerly thrusting forward her note. 'Say that I'm waiting for an answer.'

The stage-door keeper tried to interpose, but before he could explain himself the boy had rushed away.

'All letters should be given to me,' he growled as he turned away to argue with Miss Thomas, who had just arrived. In a few minutes the call-boy came back.

'Will you please step this way,' he said to Kate.

'No, you shan't,' cried the hall-keeper; 'if you try any nonsense with me I shall send round for a policeman.'

Kate started back frightened, thinking these words were addressed to her, but a glance showed her that she was mistaken.

'Oh! how dare you talk to me like that? You're an unsophisticated beast!' cried Miss Thomas.

'Pass under my arm, ma'am,' said the hall-keeper; 'I don't want this one to get through.' And amid a storm of violent words and the strains of distant music Kate went up a narrow staircase that creaked under the weight of a group of girls in strange dresses. When she got past them she saw Dick at the door of his room waiting for her. The table was covered with letters, the walls with bills announcing, 'a great success.'

He took her hand and placed her in a chair, and at first it seemed doubtful who would break an awkward and irritating silence. At last Dick said:

'I'm sorry to hear, Kate, that you've been ill; you're looking well now.'

'Yes, I'm better now,' she replied drearily; 'but perhaps if I'd died it would have been as well, for you can never love me again.'

'You know, my dear,' he said, equivocating, 'that we didn't get on well together.'

'Oh, Dick! I know it. You were very good to me, and I made your life wretched on account of my jealousy; but I couldn't help it, for I loved you better than a woman ever loved a man. I cannot tell you, I cannot find words to express how much I love you; you're everything to me. I lived for your love; I'm dying of it. Yes, Dick, I'm dying for love of you; I feel it here; it devours me like a fire, and what is so strange is, that nothing seems real to me except you. I never think of anything but of things that concern you. Anything that ever belonged to you I treasure up as a relic. You know the chaplet of pearls I used to wear when we played The Lovers Knot. Well, I have them still, although all else has gone from me. The string was broken once or twice, and some of the pearls were lost, but I threaded them again, and it still goes round my neck. I was looking at them the other day, and it made me very sad, for it made me think of the happy days—ah, the very happy days!—we have had together before I took to ——. But I won't speak of that. I've cured myself. Yes, I assure you, Dick, I've cured myself; and it is for that I've come to talk to you. Were I not sure that I would never touch brandy again I would not ask you to take me back, but I'd sooner die than do what I have done, for I know that I never will. Can you—will you—my own darling Dick, give me another trial?'

The victory hung in the balance, but at that moment a superb girl, in all the splendour of long green tights, and resplendent with breastplate and spear, flung open the door.

'Look here, Dick,' she began, but seeing Kate, she stopped short, and stammered out an apology.

'I shall be down on the stage in a minute, dear,' he said, rising from his chair. The door was shut, and they were again alone; but Kate felt that chance had gone against her. The interruption had, with a sudden shock, killed the emotions she had succeeded in awakening, and had supplied Dick with an answer that would lead him, by a way after his own heart, straight out of his difficulty.

'My dear,' he said, rising from his chair, 'I'm glad you've given up the—you know what—for, between you and me, that was the cause of all our trouble; but, candidly speaking, I don't think it would be advisable for us to live together, at least for the present, and I'll tell you why. I know that you love me very much, but, as you said yourself just now, it's your jealousy and the drink together that excites you, and leads up to those terrible rows. Now, the best plan would be for us to live apart, let us say for six months or so, until you've entirely got over your little weakness, you know; and then—why, then we'll be as happy as we used to be at Blackpool in the dear old times long ago.'

'Oh, Dick! don't say that I must wait six months; I might be dead before then. But you're not speaking the truth to me. You were just going to say that I might come back to you when the horrid girl came in. I know. Yes, I believe there's something between you.'

'Now, Kate, remember your promise not to kick up a row. I consented to see you because you said you wouldn't be violent. Here's your letter.'

'I'm not going to be violent, Dick; but six months seems such a long time.'

'It won't be as long passing as you think. And now I must run away; they're waiting for me on the stage. Have you seen the piece? Would you like to go in front?'

'No, not to-night, Dick; I feel too sad. But won't you kiss me before I go?'

Dick bent his face and kissed her; but there was a chill in the kiss that went to her heart, and she felt that his lips would never touch hers again. But she had no protest to make, and almost in silence she allowed herself to be shown out of the theatre. When she got into the mist she shivered a little, and drew her thin shawl tighter about her thin shoulders, and, with one of the choruses still ringing in her ears, she walked in the direction of the Strand. Somehow her sorrow did not seem too great for her to bear. The interview had passed neither as badly nor as well as had been expected, and thinking of the six months of probation that lay before her, but without being in the least able to realize their meaning, she walked dreaming through the sloppy, fog-smelling streets. The lamps were now but like furred patches of yellow laid on a dead grey background, and a mud-bespattered crowd rolled in and out of the darkness. The roofs overhead were engulfed in the soot-coloured sky that seemed to be descending on the heads of the passengers. Men passed carrying parcels; the white necktie of a theatre-goer was caught sight of. From Lambeth, from Islington, from Pimlico, from all the dark corners where it had been lurking in the daytime, prostitution at the fading of the light, had descended on the town—portly matrons, very respectable in brown silk dresses and veils, stood in the corners of alleys and dingy courts, scorned by the younger generation; young girls of fifteen and sixteen going by in couples with wisps of dyed hair hanging about their shoulders, advertisements of their age; the elder taking the responsibility of choosing; Germans in long ulsters trafficked in guttural intonations; policemen on their beats could have looked less concerned. The English hung round the public-houses, enviously watching the arched insteps of the Frenchwomen tripping by. Smiles there were plenty, but the fog was so thick that even the Parisians lost their native levity and wished themselves back in Paris.

At the crossing of Wellington Street she stumbled against a small man who leaned against a doorway coughing violently. They stared at each other in profound astonishment, and then Kate said in a pained and broken voice:

'Oh, Ralph! is it you?'

'Yes, indeed it is. But to think of meeting you here in London!'

They had, for the second, in a sort of way, forgotten that they had once been man and wife, and after a pause Kate said:

'But that's just what I was thinking. What are you doing in London?'

Ralph was about to answer when he was cut short by a fit of coughing. His head sank into his chest, and his little body was shaken until it seemed as if it were going to break to pieces like a bundle of sticks. Kate looked at him pityingly, and passing unconsciously over the dividing years just as she might have done when they kept shop together in Hanley, she said:

'Oh! you know you shouldn't stop out in such weather as this: you'll be breathless to-morrow.'

'Oh no, I shan't; I've got a new remedy. But I've lost my way; that's the reason why I'm so late.'

'Perhaps I can tell you. Where are you staying?'

'In an hotel in Bedford Street, near Covent Garden.'

'Well, then, this is your way; you've come too far.'

And passing again into the jostling crowd they walked on in silence side by side. A slanting cloud of fog had drifted from the river down into the street, creating a shivering and terrifying darkness. The cabs moved at walking pace, the huge omnibuses stopped belated, and their advertisements could not be read even when a block occurred close under a gas-lamp. The jewellers' windows emitted the most light; but even gold and silver wares seemed to have become tarnished in the sickening atmosphere. Then the smell from fishmongers' shops grew more sour as the assistant piled up the lobsters and flooded the marbles preparatory to closing; and, just within the circle of vision, inhaling the greasy fragrance of soup, a woman in a blue bonnet loitered near a grating.

'This is Bedford Street, I think,' said Kate, 'but it's so dark that it's impossible to see.'

'I suppose you know London well?' replied Ralph somewhat pointedly.

'Pretty well, I've been here now for some time.'

For the last three or four minutes not a word had been spoken. Kate was surprised that Ralph was not angry with her; she wanted to speak to him of old times, but it was hard to break the ice of intervening years. At last, as they stopped before the door of a small family hotel, he said:

'It's now something like four years since we parted, ain't it?'

The question startled her, and she answered nervously and hurriedly:

'I suppose it is, but I'd better wish you good-bye now—you're safe at home.'

'Oh no! come in; you look so very tired, a glass of wine will do you good. Besides, what harm? Wasn't I your husband once?'

'Oh, Ralph! how can you?'

'Why, there's no reason why I shouldn't hear how you've been getting on. We're just like strangers, so many things have occurred; I've married since—but perhaps you didn't hear of it?'

'Married! Who did you marry?'

'Well! I married your assistant, Hender.'

'What, Hender your wife?' said Kate, with an intonation of voice that was full of pain. A dagger thrust suddenly through her side as she went up the staircase could not have wounded her more cruelly than the news that the woman who had been her assistant now owned the house that once was hers. The story of the dog in the manger is as old as the world.

Through the windows of the little public sitting-room nothing was visible; everything was shrouded in the yellow curtain of fog. A commercial traveller had drawn off his boots, and was warming his slippered feet by the fire.

'Dreadful weather, sir,' said the man. 'I'm afraid it won't do your cough much good. Will you come near the fire?'

'Thank you,' said Ralph.

Kate mechanically drew forward a chair. It would be impossible for them to say a word, for the traveller was evidently inclined to be garrulous, and both wondered what they should do; but at that moment the chambermaid came to announce that the gentleman's room was ready. He took up his boots and retired, leaving the two, who had once been husband and wife, alone; and yet it seemed as difficult as ever to speak of what was uppermost in their minds. Kate helped Ralph off with his great-coat, and she noticed that he looked thinner and paler. The servant brought up two glasses of grog, and when Kate had taken off her bonnet, she said: 'Do you think I'm much altered?'

'Well, since you ask me, Kate, I must say I don't think you're looking very well. You're thinner than you used to be, and you've lost a good deal of your hair.'

'I've only just recovered from a bad illness,' she said, sighing, and as she raised the glass to her lips the gaslight defined the whole contour of her head. The thick hair that used to encircle her pale prominent temples like rich velvet, looked now like a black silk band frayed and whitened at the seam.

'But what have you been doing? Have things gone pretty well with you?' said Ralph, whose breath came from him in a thin but continuous whistle. 'What happened when I got my decree of divorce?'

'Nothing particular for a while, but afterwards we were married.'

'Oh!' said Ralph, 'so he married you, did he? Well, I shouldn't have expected it of him. So we're both married. Isn't it odd? And meeting, too, in this way.'

'Yes, many things have happened since then. I've been on the stage—travelling all over England.'

'What! you on the stage, Kate?' said Ralph, lifting his head from his hand. 'Oh lord! oh lord! how—Ha! ha! oh! but I mustn't la-ugh; I won't be able to breathe.'

Kate turned to him almost angrily, and the ghost of the prima donna awakening in her, she said:

'I don't see what there is to laugh at. I've played all the leading parts, and in all the principal towns in England—Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds. The Newcastle Chronicle said my Serpolette was the best they'd seen.'

Ralph looked bewildered, like a man blinded for a moment by a sudden flash of lightning. He could not at once realize that this woman, who had been his wife, who had washed and scrubbed in his little home in Hanley, was now one of those luminous women who, in clear skirts and pink stockings, wander singing beautiful songs, amid illimitable forests and unscalable mountains. For a moment he regretted he had married Miss Hender.

'But I don't think I shall ever act again.'

'How's that?' he said with an intonation of disappointment in his voice.

'I don't know,' said Kate. 'I'm not living with my husband now, and I haven't the courage to look out for an engagement myself.'

Ralph stared at her vaguely. 'Look out for an engagement?' he repeated to himself; it seemed to him that he must be dreaming.

'Aren't you happy with him? Doesn't he treat you well?' said Ralph, dropping perforce from his dream back into reality,

'Oh yes, he has always been very good to me. I can't say how it was, but somehow after a time we didn't get on. I dare say it was my fault. But how do you get on with Miss Hender?' said Kate, partly from curiosity, half from a wish to change the conversation.

'Oh, pretty well,' said Ralph, with something that sounded, in spite of his wheezing, like a sigh.

'How does she manage the dressmaking? She was always a good workwoman, but she never had much taste, and I should fancy wouldn't be able to do much if left entirely to herself.'

'That's just what occurred. It's curious you should have guessed so correctly. The business has all gone to the dogs, and since mother's death we've turned the house into a lodging-house.'

'And is mother dead?' cried Kate, clasping her hands. 'What must she have thought of me.'

Ralph did not answer, but after a long silence he said:

'It's a pity, ain't it, that we didn't pull it off better together?'

Kate raised her head and looked at him quickly. Her look was full of gratitude.

'Yes,' she said, 'I behaved very badly towards you, but I believe I've been punished for it.'

'You told me that he married you and treated you very well.'

'Oh!' she said, bursting into tears, 'don't ask me, it's too long a story; I'll tell you another time, but not now.'

It appeared to Kate that her heart was on fire and that she must die of grief. 'Was this life?' she asked herself. Oh, to be at rest and out of the way for ever! Ralph, too, seemed deeply affected; after a pause he said:

'I don't know how it was, or why, but now I come to think of it I remember that I used to be cross with you.'

'It was the asthma that made you cross, and well it might;' and she asked him if he still suffered from asthma, and he answered:

'At times, yes.'

'But the cigarettes,' she said, 'used to relieve you; do you still smoke them?'

'Yes, and sometimes they relieve me and sometimes they don't.' A long silence separated them, and breaking it suddenly he said:

'There were faults on both sides. On every side,' he added, 'for I don't exempt mother from blame either. She was always too hard upon you. Now, I should never have minded your going to the theatre and amusing yourself. I shouldn't have minded your being an actress, and I should have gone to fetch you home every evening.'

Kate smiled through her misery, and he continued, following his idea to the end:

'It wouldn't have interfered with the business if you had been; on the contrary, it would have brought us a connection, and I might have had up those plate-glass windows, and taken in the fruiterer's shop.'

Ralph stopped. The roar of London had sunk out of hearing in the yellow depths of the fog, and for some minutes nothing was heard but the short ticking of the clock. It was a melancholy pleasure to dream what might have been had things only taken a different turn, and like children making mud-pies it amused them to rebuild the little fabric of their lives; whilst one reconstructed his vision of broken glass, the other lamented over the ruins of penny journal sentiment. Then awakening by fits and starts, each confided in the other. Ralph told Kate how Mrs. Ede had spoken of her when her flight had been discovered; Kate tried to explain that she was not as much to blame as might be imagined. Ralph's curiosity constantly got the better of him, and he couldn't but ask her to tell him something about her stage experience. One thing led to another, and before twelve o'clock it surprised her to think she had told him so much.

The conversation was carried on in brief and broken phrases. The man and the woman sat close together shivering over the fire. There were no curtains to the windows, and the fog had crept through the sashes into the room. Kate coughed from time to time—a sharp, hacking cough—and Ralph's wheezing grew thicker in sound.

'I'm a-fraid I shall have a b-bad night, this dre-ad-ful weather.'

'I should like to stop to nurse you; but I must be getting home.'

'You surely won't think of going out such a night as this; you'll never find your way home.'

'Yes, yes, I shall; it wouldn't do for me to remain here.'

They who had once been husband and wife looked at each other, and both smiled painfully.

'Ve-ry well, I'll see you do-wnstairs.'

'Oh no! you mustn't, you'll kill yourself!'

Ralph, however, insisted. They stood on the doorstep for a moment together, suffocating in a sulphur-hued atmosphere.

'You'll come a-nd and see me again to-to-morrow, won't you?'

'Yes, yes!' cried Kate; 'to-morrow! to-morrow!' and she disappeared in the darkness.



XXX

But on the morrow she could not leave her room, and at the end of the week the news at the Bedford Hotel was that Mr. Ede had gone away the day before without leaving any message.

The porter who informed her of his departure looked her over curiously, setting her thinking that he thought Mr. Ede had done well to get clear of the likes of her. She had tried to make herself look tidy and thought she had succeeded, but tidy or untidy, it was all the same, nothing mattered now; she was done for. No doubt the porter was right; Ralph had gone away to escape from her, which was just as well, for what more had they to say to each other: hadn't he married Hender? And passing in front of a shop-window she caught sight of herself in a looking-glass. 'Not up to much,' she said, and passed on into the Strand mumbling her misfortunes and causing the passers-by to look after her. She had not pinned up her skirt safely, a foot of it dragged over the pavement, and hearing jeering voices behind her she went into a public-house to ask for a pin. The barmaid obliged her with one, and while arranging her skirt she heard a man say: 'Well, they that talk of the evil of drinking know very little of what they are talking about. Drink has saved as many men as it has killed.' Kate's heart warmed to the man, for she knew a glass had often saved her from making away with herself, but never had she felt more like the river in her life than she did that morning. Threepennyworth would be enough, she could not afford more; Dick was only allowing her two pounds a week, and a woman had to look after the thirty-nine shillings very strictly to find the fortieth in her pocket before her next week's money was due. She felt better after having her glass; her thoughts were no longer on the river lying at the end of Wellington Street, but on the passengers in the Strand, the swaggering mummers, male and female; the men with lordly airs and billycock hats; the women with yellow hair and unholy looks upon their faces. There were groups of men and women round a theatrical agent's place of business, all sorts of people coming and going; lawyers from the Temple, journalists on their way to Fleet Street; prostitutes of all kinds and all sorts, young and old, fat and thin, of all nationalities, French, Belgian, and German, went by in couples, in rows, their eyes flaming invitations. Children with orange coloured hair sold matches and were followed down suspicious alleys; a strange hurried life, full of complexity, had begun in the twilight before the lamplighters went by. Girls and boys scrambled after each other quarrelling and selling newspapers. The spectacle helped the time away between four o'clock and seven. At seven she turned into some eating-house and dined for a shilling, and afterwards there was nothing to do than wander in the Strand. Some of the women who preferred to pick up a living by the sale of their lips rather than by standing for hours over a stinking wash-tub were very often kindly human beings, and there was nobody else except these street-walkers with whom she could exchange a few words and invite into a drinking shop for a glass. Over the counter she related her successes as Clairette in Madame Angot and Serpolette in Les Cloches de Corneville, and if an incredulous look came into the faces of her guests she sang to them the little ditties, proving by her knowledge of them that all she told them was true. From the drinking-shop they passed out in groups, and these women took Kate to their eating-houses, and she listened to their stories, and when at the end of the week she had spent all her money sometimes these women lent her shillings and half-crowns, and when she could not return the money she had borrowed they asked her: 'Why don't you do as we do?'

Her pretty face of former days was almost gone by this time, but traces of it still remained. 'If you would only dress yourself a little more becomingly and come along with us, you would be able to make two ends meet. With what you get from your husband you would be better off than any of us.' But she could not be persuaded, and as time moved on, and drunkenness became more inveterate, the belief that she was not utterly lost unless she was unfaithful to Dick took possession of her, and she clung to it with an almost desperate insistency, saying to her friends, 'If I were to do that I should go down to the river and drown myself.' She used to hear laughter when she said these words, and the replies were that every woman had said the same thing: 'But we all come to it sooner or later.' 'Not me, not me!' she replied, tottering out of the public-house. But one night, awakening in the dusk between daylight and dark, she remembered that something had befallen her that had never befallen her before. She was not sure, it may have been that she had dreamed it. All the same, she could not rid herself of the idea that last night in the public-house near Charing Cross a man had come in and said he would pay for the drinks, and that afterwards she had gone to one of the hotels in Villiers Street. If she hadn't why did she think of Villiers Street? She rarely went down that street. Yet she was haunted by a memory, a hateful memory that had kept her awake, and had caused her to moan and to cry for hours, till at last sleep fell upon her. On waking her first thought was to inquire from the women, and she walked up and down the Strand seeking them till nightfall. But they could tell her nothing of what had happened after she left them, 'Dry your eyes, Kate,' they said. 'What matter? Your husband deserted you; aren't you free to live with whom you please?'

Kate felt that all they said was true enough, but she prayed that the memory of the hotel bedroom that had risen up in her mind was the memory of a dream, and not of something that had befallen her in her waking senses. It were bad enough that she should have dreamed such a thing, and on returning home she fell on her knees and prayed that what she feared had been, had not been; and she rose from her knees, her eyes full of tears, and a sort of leaden despair in her heart that she felt would never pass away.

As the days went by her mind became denser, she fell into obtusities out of which she found it difficult to rouse herself. Even her violent temper seemed to leave her, and miserable and hopeless she rolled from one lodging to another, drinking heavily, bringing the drink back with her and drinking in her bed until her hand was too unsteady to pour out another glass of whisky. She drank whisky, brandy, gin, and if she couldn't get these, any other spirit would serve her purpose, even methylated spirit.

Her bed-curtains were taken away by the landlady lest Kate should set them on fire. The landlady lit the gas at nightfall and turned it out before she went to bed—'Only in that way,' she said to herself, 'can we be sure that that woman won't burn us all to death in our beds. Once a room is let,' she continued, 'it's hard to turn a sick woman out, especially if there's no excuse, and in this case there's none. For you see, Mrs. Lennox is getting two pounds a week from her husband,' Mr. Locker, Mrs. Rawson's evening friend, agreed with her; and he spoke of the recompense she would be entitled to from Mr. Lennox in the event of Mrs. Lennox's death; 'for, of course, every trouble and annoyance should be recompensed.' She agreed with him; but her eyes suddenly softening, she said: 'I haven't seen her since this morning when I took her up a cup of tea. She may like a bit of dinner. We're having some rabbit for supper, I'll ask her if she'd like a piece.'

A few minutes later she returned saying she was afraid Mrs. Lennox was dying, and that it might be as well to send to the hospital. Locker answered that perhaps it would be just as well, but on second thoughts he suggested that the husband should be communicated with.

'It isn't far to the Opera Comique,' Mrs. Rawson answered, 'I'll just put on my hat and jacket and go round there.'

'It'll be the best way to escape responsibility,' Locker said on the doorstep; but without answering she went up the Strand, passing over to the other side when she came in sight of the Globe Theatre.

'Where's the stage entrance of the Opera Comique?' she asked at the bookstall at the corner of Holliwell Street, and was told that she would find the stage entrance in Wytch Street, about half-way down the street. 'The stage-doors of the Globe and the Opera Comique are side by side,' was cried after her. 'What does he mean by half-way down the street,' she muttered; 'he meant a quarter down,' and she addressed herself to the door-keeper, who answered surlily that Mr. Lennox was particularly engaged at that moment, but at Mrs. Rawson's words—'I believe his wife is dying'—he agreed to send up a message as soon as he could get hold of somebody to take it. At last somebody's dresser was stopped as he was about to pass through the swing-door; he agreed to take the message, and a few minutes after Mrs. Rawson was conducted up several little staircases and down some passages to find herself eventually in a small room in which there were three people, one a pleasant-faced man, so affable and kind that Mrs. Rawson thought she could have got on with him very well if she had had a chance. By him stood a tall imperious lady who rustled a voluminous skirt—a person of importance, Mrs. Rawson judged her to be from the deference with which a little thread-paper-man listened to her—the costumier, she learnt from scraps of conversation.

'I'm sorry,' Mr. Lennox said. 'All you tell me is very sad. But I'm afraid I can do nothing.'

'That's what I think myself,' Mrs. Rawson answered. 'I'm afraid there's nothing to be done, but I thought I'd better come and tell you. You see, when I went up with some beef-tea she looked to me like one that hadn't many days to live. I may be mistaken, of course.'

'She should have a nurse,' Mrs. Forest said.

'I do all I can for her,' Mrs. Rawson murmured, 'but you see with three children to look after and only one maid,'—the two women began to talk together and the thread-paper man took advantage of the opportunity to whisper to Dick that he thought he could manage to do the flower-girls' dresses at five shillings less.

'That will be all right,' Dick replied. 'I will call round in the morning, Mr. Shaffle.'

Mrs. Forest held out her jacket to Dick, who helped her into it.

'Where are you going ... shall you be coming back again?' he asked.

'I'm going to nurse your wife, Dick,' she said, picking up her long feather boa, 'and isn't all that is happening now a vindication that we did well not to yield ourselves to ourselves?—for had we done so our regrets would be now unanimous, and I shouldn't be able to go to her with clear conscience.... She's been drinking heavily again, no doubt,' Mrs. Forest said, turning to Mrs. Rawson. 'But we mustn't judge or condemn anyone, so Jesus hath said. I'll go with you now, Mrs. Rawson, and you'll perhaps come to-morrow, Dick, to see her?'

'If I could help my wife I'd go, Laura, but as I've often told you, my will to help her was spent long ago; it would be of no use.' Laura's eyes lit up for a moment. 'But if she asks to see me I'll go.' At these words Mrs. Forest's eyes softened, and he began to ask himself how much truth there was in Laura's resolve to go and attend upon his wife in what was no doubt a last agony. Seeing and hearing her put into his head remembrances of an actress, he could not remember which. Her demeanour was as lofty as any and her speech almost rose into blank verse at times; and he began to think that she had missed her vocation in life. It might have been that she was destined by nature for the stage. 'She's more mummer than myself or Kate,' he said to himself, and giving an ear to her outpourings, he recognized in them the rudiments of the grand style: and he admired her transitions—her voice would drop and she seemed to find her way back into homely speech. Her soul seemed to pass back and forwards easily, and Dick did not feel sure which was the real woman and which the fictitious. 'She doesn't know herself,' he said, for at that moment she had left the tripod and was sitting in imagination at the bedside in attendance, looking from the patient to the clock, administering the medicine on the exact time.

When Mrs. Rawson spoke about the length of the day and night she answered that she would take her work with her, and bade Dick not to be anxious about the changes he had asked her to make in the second act. 'They shall be made,' she said, 'and without laying myself open to any claim for demurrage.'

'Demurrage' Dick exclaimed.

'She shall have attendance, but a soul ready to depart shouldn't be detained in port longer than is necessary. And Mrs. Rawson would like to let her room to one who has not received her sailing orders, as is the case with your poor wife, Dick,—that is to say, if I understand Mrs. Rawson's account of her illness.'

'She's not here for long,' Mrs. Rawson answered; 'but you mustn't think, ma'am, that I'd lay any under claim for the trouble she's been to me, only what is fair. "Fair is fair all the world over," has been my maxim ever since I started letting apartments. But perhaps, ma'am, you'll be wanting a room in my house. If you do there's the drawing-room floor, which would suit you nicely. But you can't be day nurse and night nurse yourself.' Laura answered that that was true, and talking of a nurse from Charing Cross Hospital they went out of the house together. At the end of the street Laura stopped suddenly. 'But she must have a doctor,' she said, and waited for Mrs. Rawson to recommend one, and Mrs. Rawson replied that the doctor that attended her and her children was out of town.

'We will ask here,' Laura said, and called to the cabby to stop at the apothecary's, and the questions she put to the man behind the counter were so pertinent that Mrs. Rawson began to think that perhaps she had misjudged Mrs. Forest, who now seemed to her a sensible and practical woman. They jumped again into a cab, and after a short drive returned with a doctor, Laura relating to him in the cab all they knew about his patient.

'From what you tell me it seems a bad case,' he said, and turning from Laura to Mrs. Rawson he asked her to describe the patient.

'When I took up the beef-tea I found her that bad that I felt that I'd always have it on my conscience if I didn't let her husband know how bad his wife was——'

'I'm afraid, doctor, that she's been drinking for years,' Laura interjected.

'Well, as soon as I see Mrs. Lennox I shall be able to tell you if there is in my opinion any reasonable hope of saving her. I believe you're going to nurse Mrs. Lennox through this illness?' he asked Laura, and she began to tell him how she had always known of this duty: years before she had ever met Mr. Lennox it had been revealed to her—not the exact time, but the fact that she would have to attend upon the wife of some man who would be engaged in the publication of some of her works. 'You see, her husband is producing my play Incarnation at the Opera Comique, and I've brought some of my work with me.' She opened her bag and laid on the table the manuscript entitled Sayings of the Sybil, and the doctor listened at first not satisfied that she was altogether the nurse into whose charge he would have liked to have given Mrs. Lennox; but feeling that, if he were to press the necessity of a nurse on Mrs. Forest, she might leave, he refrained, thinking that very often people who talked eccentrically were very practical. He had known extravagant speech go with practical nursing, and hoping that Mrs. Forest would prove another such one, he laid down the manuscript on the table.

'But if you believe that we live hereafter, why should you deny pre-existence?' and without waiting for the doctor to answer, Laura averred that she had lived at least eight times already; witnessing the dread contest of death, and dying for the cause of Pan, and the Light-King, and Eros the immortal, 'whose I am,' she said; 'and once again, for the ninth time, I live and watch the contest—watch with joy which overcomes fear, with love that conquers death.'

'Well, I hope we shall be able to conquer death in this instance,' the doctor answered, 'and with care we may save her for some time, and if—'

'Ah, if,' Laura interjected, and curtseying to him she led the doctor to the door. 'Nothing,' she began, 'can be worse than the present state of earth-life, and in all its phases; if the human race is to be evolved into a higher degree of perfection, no weak half-measures will avail to effect the change; there must, on the contrary, be a radical change in hereditary environment.'

The doctor listened a moment and, as if enchanted with the impression she had produced, Laura went back to the writing-table, and settling the folds of her brown silk widely over the floor, she began to write:

'"Ye gods, they fail, they falter, Thy hand hath struck them down. Their woof the Parcae alter, Beware thy mother's frown! What such as I in glory Compared with such as thee? Would, in the conflict gory, That I had died for thee!"'

At this point the inspiration seemed to desert her, and raising her pen from the paper, she bit its end thoughtfully, seeking for a transitional phrase whereby she might be able to allude to the Light-god.

They were in a six-shilling-a-week bedroom in the neighbourhood of the Strand. The window looked on to a bit of red-tiled roofing, a cistern, and a clothes-line on which a petticoat flapped, and in a small iron bedstead, facing the light, Kate lay delirious, her stomach enormously distended by dropsy. From time to time she waved her arms, now wasted to mere bones. She had been insensible for three whole days, speaking in broken phrases of her past life—of Mrs. Ede, the potteries, the two little girls, Annie and Lizzie. Dick, she declared, had been very good to her. Ralph, too, had been kind, and she was determined that the two men should not quarrel over her. They must not kill each other; she would not allow it; they should be friends. They would all be friends yet; that is to say, if Mrs. Ede would permit of it; and why should she stand between people and make enemies of them? She fell back into stupor; and next day her ideas were still more confused. In the belief that it was for the part of the Baillie that Dick and Ralph were quarrelling she began to express her regret that there was nothing in the piece for her. Nor were memories of the baby girl who had died in Manchester lacking. She prayed Ralph to believe that the child was not his but Dick's child. She prayed and supplicated in Laura's arms till Laura laid her back on the pillow exhausted.

'Give me something to drink; I'm dying of thirst,' the sick woman murmured faintly.

Laura started from her reveries, and going over to the fireplace, where the beef-tea was standing, poured out half a cup; but, owing to great difficulty in breathing, it was some time before the patient could drink it.

After a long silence Kate said:

'I've been very ill, haven't I? I think I must be dying.'

'Death is not death,' Laura answered, 'when we die for Pan, the undying representative of the universe cognizable to the senses.'

Over Kate's mind lay a vague dream, through whose gloom two things were just perceptible—an idea of death and a desire to see Dick. But she was almost too weak to seek for words, and it was with great effort that she said:

'I don't remember who you are; I can think of nothing now, but I should like to see my husband once more. Could you fetch him? Is he here?'

'You've not been happy with him, I know, my sister; but I don't blame you. Your marriage was not a psychological union; and when marriage isn't that, woman cannot set her foot on the lowest temple of Eros.'

'I'm too ill to talk with you,' Kate replied, 'but I loved my husband well, too well. I keep all my little remembrances of him in that box; they aren't much—not much—but I should like him to have them when I'm gone, so that he may know that I loved him to the last. Perhaps then he may forgive me. Will you let me see them?'

She looked at the packet of letters, kissed the crumpled calico rose, the button she had pulled off his coat in a drunken fit and preserved for love, and she even slipped on her wrist the last few pearls that remained of the chaplet she wore when they played at sweethearts in The Lovers' Knot. But after the love-tokens had been put back in the box, and Kate again asked Mrs. Forest to bring Dick to her, she began to ramble in her speech, and to fancy herself in Hanley. The most diverse scenes were heaped together in the complex confusion of Kate's nightmare; the most opposed ideas were intermingled. At one moment she told the little girls, Annie and Lizzie, of the immorality of the conversations in the dressing-rooms of theatres; at another she stopped the Rehearsal of an opera bouffe to preach to the mummers—in phrases that were remembrances of the extemporaneous prayers in the Wesleyan Church—of the advantages of an earnest, working religious life. It was like a costume ball, where chastity grinned from behind a mask that vice was looking for, while vice hid his nakedness in some of the robes that chastity had let fall. Thus up and down, like dice thrown by demon players, were rattled the two lives, the double life that this weak woman had lived, and a point was reached where the two became one, when she began to sing her famous song:

'Look at me here, look at me there,'

alternately with the Wesleyan hymns. Sometimes in her delirium she even fitted the words of one on to the tune of the other.

Still, Laura took no notice, and her pen continued to scratch, scratch, till it occurred to her that although Dick's marriage had not been a psychological one, it might be as well that he should see his wife before she died; and having come to this conclusion suddenly, she put on her bonnet and left the house.

The landlady brought in the lamp, placing it on the table, out of sight of the dying woman's eyes.

A dreadful paleness had changed even the yellow of her face to an ashen tint; her lips had disappeared, her eyes were dilated, and she tried to raise herself up in bed. Her withered arms were waved to and, fro, and in the red gloom shed from the ill-smelling paraffin lamp the large, dimly seen folds of the bedclothes were tossed to and fro by the convulsions that agitated the whole body. Another hour passed away, marked by the cavernous breathing of the woman as she crept to the edge of death. At last there came a sigh, deeper and more prolonged; and with it she died.

Soon after, before the corpse had grown cold, heavy steps were heard on the staircase, and Dick and Laura entered, one with a quantity of cockatoo-like flutterings, the other steadily, like a big and ponderous animal. At a glance they saw that all was over, and in silence they sat down, their hands resting on the table. The man spoke hesitatingly in awkward phrases of a happy release; the woman listened with a calm serenity that caused Dick to wonder. She would have liked to have said something concerning psychological marriages, but the appearance of the huge body beneath the bed-clothes restrained her: he wished to say something nice and kind, but Laura's presence put everything out of his head, and so his ideas became more than ever broken and disjointed, his thoughts wandered, until at last, lifting his eyes from the manuscript on the table, he said:

'Have you finished the second act, dear?'



THE END