to go. At that moment the
white cat, jumping down from the table in front of her, rubbed itself
against her skirts, and she stumbled slightly.

"Take care!" cried Girard, grasping the shaking pitcher over her slight
hold of it.

Their hands touched--for the first time since the night of disaster, the
night of her trust and his protection. The next instant there was a
crash; the fragments of the jug lay upon the kitchen floor, the water
streaming over it in rivulets.

"Dosia!" called the frightened voice of Lois from above.

"Yes, I'm coming," Dosia called back. "There's nothing the matter!" She
had run from the room without looking up at that figure beside her,
snatching a glass of water automatically from the dining-table as she
passed by it. Fast as her feet might carry her, they could not keep pace
with her beating heart.

When the telephone-bell rang a moment after, it was to confirm the
tidings given before. Justin was in Chicago.

TO BE CONCLUDED

[Illustration]

THE PROBLEMS OF SUICIDE

BY GEORGE KENNAN

Few branches of sociological investigation have more practical
importance, or present a greater number of problems, difficulties, and
interesting speculative questions, than the branch that deals with the
complex, varied, and often inexplicable phenomena of suicide. When we
consider the fact that more than ten thousand persons take their own
lives in the United States every year, that more than seventy thousand
die annually by their own hands in Europe, and that the suicide rate is
constantly and rapidly increasing throughout the greater part of the
civilized world, we are forced to admit that, from the view-point of
vital economy at least, the subject is one of the utmost gravity. In
1881 the annual suicide rate of the United States was only 12 per
million of the population, and our total number of suicides was only
605; last year our suicide rate had risen to 126 per million, and our
suicides numbered 10,782. If the present rate of increase be maintained,
we shall lose by suicide, in the next five years, nearly as many lives
as were lost by the Union armies in battle in the five years of the
Civil War. We are already losing annually from this cause more men than
were killed on the Union side in the three great battles of Gettysburg,
Spottsylvania, and the Wilderness taken together.

Statisticians have estimated that, in the world as a whole, there is a
suicide every three minutes, and