onition of a
disappointment, the possibility of which he still refused to actually
entertain. He owned to himself that it was a harder task than he had
thought to bring back to life one whose veins the frost of despair has
chilled. There were, perhaps, some things too hard even for his love. It
was doubly disheartening for him thus to lose confidence; not only on his
own account, but on hers. Not only had he to ask himself what would
become of his life in the event of failure, but what would become of
hers? One day overcome by this sort of discouragement, feeling that he
was not equal to the case, that matters were growing worse instead of
better, and that he needed help from some source, he asked Madeline if he
had not better write to her mother to come to Boston, so that they two
could keep house together.

"No," she said in a quick, startled voice, looking up at him in a scared
way.

He hastened to reassure her, and say that he had not seriously thought of
it, but he noticed that during the rest of the evening she cast furtive
glances of apprehension at him, as if suspicious that he had some plot
against her. She had fled from home because she could not bear her
mother's eyes.

Meanwhile he was becoming almost as preoccupied and gloomy as she, and
their dreary interviews grew more dreary than ever, for she was now
scarcely more silent than he. His constant and increasing anxiety, in
addition to the duties of a responsible business position, began to tell
on his health. The owner of the manufactory of which he was
superintendent, called him into his office one day, and told him he was
working too hard, and must take a little vacation. But he declined. Soon
after a physician whom he knew buttonholed him on the street, and managed
to get in some shrewd questions about his health. Henry owned he did not
sleep much nights. The doctor said he must take a vacation, and, this
being declared impossible, forced a box of sleeping powders on him, and
made him promise to try them.

All this talk about his health; as well as his own sensations, set him to
thinking of the desperate position in which Madeline would be left in the
event of his serious sickness or death.

That very day he made up his mind that it would not do to postpone their
marriage any longer. It seemed almost brutal to urge it on her in her
present frame of mind, and yet it was clearly out of the question to
protract the present situation.

The quarter of