ade it easier to breathe.

After he had leaned out into the darkness for a few minutes he heard
her say: "Newland! Do shut the window. You'll catch your death."

He pulled the sash down and turned back. "Catch my death!" he echoed;
and he felt like adding: "But I've caught it already. I AM dead--I've
been dead for months and months."

And suddenly the play of the word flashed up a wild suggestion. What
if it were SHE who was dead! If she were going to die--to die
soon--and leave him free! The sensation of standing there, in that
warm familiar room, and looking at her, and wishing her dead, was so
strange, so fascinating and overmastering, that its enormity did not
immediately strike him. He simply felt that chance had given him a new
possibility to which his sick soul might cling. Yes, May might
die--people did: young people, healthy people like herself: she might
die, and set him suddenly free.

She glanced up, and he saw by her widening eyes that there must be
something strange in his own.

"Newland! Are you ill?"

He shook his head and turned toward his arm-chair. She bent over her
work-frame, and as he passed he laid his hand on her hair. "Poor May!"
he said.

"Poor? Why poor?" she echoed with a strained laugh.

"Because I shall never be able to open a window without worrying you,"
he rejoined, laughing also.

For a moment she was silent; then she said very low, her head bowed
over her work: "I shall never worry if you're happy."

"Ah, my dear; and I shall never be happy unless I can open the windows!"

"In THIS weather?" she remonstrated; and with a sigh he buried his head
in his book.

Six or seven days passed. Archer heard nothing from Madame Olenska,
and became aware that her name would not be mentioned in his presence
by any member of the family. He did not try to see her; to do so while
she was at old Catherine's guarded bedside would have been almost
impossible. In the uncertainty of the situation he let himself drift,
conscious, somewhere below the surface of his thoughts, of a resolve
which had come to him when he had leaned out from his library window
into the icy night. The strength of that resolve made it easy to wait
and make no sign.

Then one day May told him that Mrs. Manson Mingott had asked to see
him. There was nothing surprising in the request, for the old lady was
steadily recovering, and she had always openly declared that she
preferred Archer to any of her