en.

He walked quickly round to the house in Ninth Street, where he asked for
Bartell. But only Mrs. Laithe was at home. This embarrassed him, great
as was his solicitude for her. She had sought his confidence more than
once of late, but he could not tell her of doubts only half defined, of
fears vague to absurdity, of anxieties that might well be baseless. He
thought that now he could have talked, finding her alone, but for once
she seemed rather curiously preoccupied. They sat together in the
library with only a half light, the two windows opened for random
breezes. Suddenly, as her face was toward him, dim though the light was,
he caught the look that had troubled him so hauntingly in the spring. He
knew that look now; it was the look he had seen on his father's face in
the last year of his life--the look of a spirit divesting itself of the
flesh.

"You _are_ ill," he said, trying to speak lightly under his sudden
alarm. "Let me have a better look at you." He turned the light to a full
blaze. Her wonted paleness was warmed to a sinister flush about the eyes
and the upper face, and, though her eyes flashed bravely at him in
denial, the bones were sharp above her hollowed cheeks, and her once
rounded chin had become lean. She shivered as she spoke.

"I'm a little exhausted by the heat; nothing more. Lower the light,
please. I don't care to be studied just now."

"But I know you're not well. You ought to go off some place. Get out to
pasture at once. You've been 'over-packed,' kept too long on the trail."

"You, too? They all say it. It's so easy to say."

"And easy to do."

"It's hard to do, and yet I'm afraid I must. I've felt that I ought to
be here with my charges--you have been one of them." She brightened with
a sudden inspiration. "You need rest yourself. Your face shows it.
You've been depressed a long time, you are worried now. Let us both
rest. My aunt up at Kensington has wanted me there--the aunt my sister
is with. She'd be glad to have you as well. It's a big house and she
likes young people. There! Will you go with me?"

She rose, waiting, electrified, for his answer. Instantly he felt that
he wished this above all things. There he could find himself, fortify
his soul for any number of Teevans--perhaps fortify her own.

"I'll go," he answered heartily. "It will be good for us both."

She fell into her chair with a long "Ah!" then she gave the purring
little laugh, like that of a child made happy