of
the top sheet. "She didn't die, of course. She rallied at the last
moment and got well--and found herself safely married after all, and
quite ready to take her chances of living happily with M'sieu Jee-mee
ever afterward! There--isn't that a nice story, Ambo? Don't you like
pretty-pie fairy tales when they happen to be true?"

That she could ask me this with her heart breaking! Again I could not
trust myself to speak calmly, and I saw that she was worn out with the
effort she had made to overcome her weakness, and what I believed to be
a living pain in her breast. I rose.

"Ambo!" she exclaimed, wide-eyed, "still you don't ask me why Jimmy
didn't tell us! How stupid of you to take it all like this!"

"I've stayed too long, dear," I mumbled; "far too long. I've let you
talk too much. Why, it's almost dark! To-morrow----"

"No, _now_," she insisted, with a little frown of displeasure. "I won't
have you thinking meanly of Jimmy! It's too absurdly unfair! I'm ashamed
of you, Ambo."

How she idealized him! How she had always idealized that normal,
likable, essentially commonplace Irish boy--pouring out, wasting for him
treasures of unswerving loyalty! It was damnable. But these things were
the final mysteries of life, these instinctive bonds, yielding no clue
to reason. One could only accept them, bitterly, with a curse or a groan
withheld. Accept them--since one must....

"Well, dear," broke from me with a touch, almost, of impatience, "I
confess I'm more interested in your health than in Jimmy's psychology!
But I see you won't sleep a wink if you don't tell me!"

"I've never known you to be so horrid," she said faintly, all the
weariness of body and soul returning upon her for a moment, till she
fought it back. She did so, to my amazement, with an entirely unexpected
chuckle, a true sharp, clear Birch Street gleam. "You don't deserve it,
Ambo, but I'm going to make you smile a little, whether you feel like it
or not! The reason Jimmy didn't tell us was because--after Jeanne-Marie
got well--he spent weeks trying to persuade her that a marriage made
exclusively for eternity oughtn't to be considered binding on this side!
She had been entirely certain, he kept pointing out to her, that she
ought not to marry him in this world, and she had only done so when she
thought she was being taken from it." Susan chuckled again. "Can't you
hear him, Ambo--and her? Jimmy, feeling he had won something precious
through an unfai