l, don't--don't do that. Let him off. I promise to take
him away. It's all true; you've handled him well, and you can break him
now--but don't. Please, please let him go. I'll take him away, I tell
you. I promise he shall never bother you again."

He looked at her, incredulous.

"You're asking me to consider _him_--really?"

"No, no--to consider me. Please, please listen--please consider me."

"But you--I thought you----"

"Randall"--she had regained a little of her first coolness--"I'm done
for. I found that out to-day. I've a year to live, at most. A scant
year, if it's to be like this. Try to grasp it. I've wanted so much, had
so little of life. But, I must go, they tell me. Can you understand what
that means, as well as I understood what this meant to you--a sentence
of death, a few little months to snatch at happiness?"

He stared at her uncertainly, but half comprehending. She saw that the
drink was affecting him at last. His eyes were dulled, his face had lost
its centered look.

"Going to die, Eleanor? Die in a year? What rot! Don't talk rot. Nobody
dies in a year." He spoke carefully, with a deliberate attack on each
word, as if he mistrusted his tongue.

"But it's true, Randall, I swear it's true. Can you understand?"

"Understand?" he repeated, and through her tense absorption she was
astonished to see on his face an incredible look of pity. "Understand?
Why, of course! And it's too bad, my girl. Poor Eleanor! Die in a
year--why wouldn't I understand? But never mind"--he seemed to search
clumsily for words of cheer. "Death isn't anything but an incident in
the scheme of life--a precious contemptible one, I've no doubt. We live,
and that's a little thing--but death's littler. I dare say we live as
long as we need to. Who was the old chap--Plotinus, wasn't
it?--conceived the body to be a penitential mechanism for the soul? All
the better if we expiate early. Gad! I must have had a quantity of
things to atone for--though I'm really younger than you may think, Nell.
Poor girl--poor girl!" He brightened as he drained his glass to her.
"Here's to you, wherever you are. Come, be cheerful anyway. What was it
struck in my mind yesterday?--a sentence from one of Arbuthnot's letters
to Swift--just the meat for you--'A reasonable hope of going--a
reasonable hope of going to a good place and an absolute certainty of
leaving a bad one.' That's the sentiment--keep it in mind, my dear."

She was nerving herself to