d. Will this precious doctor
dine with us?"

"This precious! You are to have great faith in your doctor; but I am
sorry to say he will not be able to dine with us. He has other
occupations, you see; and for company I am afraid you will have to be
content with such as your nurse may be disposed to give you!"

Before he could say anything else, she had left the room.

He was alone--alone and happy.

Straight from prison to paradise. That was what the morning's work meant
for him, and he could not think with dry eyes of the peri who had
brought him there.

Oh, the bitterness of that dungeon torture, when his heart had been
branded with shame and seared with humiliation; when he had sworn that
life had no more hope or savor for him, and the coming out from his cell
had seemed, by anticipation, worse than the going in!

This was the coming out, and he was already radiant with happiness,
oblivious of suffering, hopeful of the future. It was enough, he would
not probe it, he would not peer into the dark corners of his prospect;
he would simply realize that his soul had been lost, that it had been
found by Lettice, and that it was hers by right of trover, as well as by
absolute surrender.

The mid-day sun shone in at his window and tempted him to the verandah
outside. Here he found one of those chairs, delightful to invalids and
lazy men, which are constructed of a few crossed pieces of wood and a
couple of yards of sacking, giving nearly all the luxury of a hammock
without its disturbing element of insecurity. And by its side,
wonderful, to relate, there was a box of cigarettes and some matches.
Since they were there, he might as well smoke one. His last smoke was
seven or eight months ago--quite long enough to give a special relish to
this particular roll of Turkish tobacco.

As he lay back in his hammock chair, and sent one ring chasing another
to the roof of the verandah, he heard a step on the gravel beneath him.
Lettice, with a basket in one hand and a pair of scissors in the other,
was collecting flowers and leaves for her vases. Unwilling to leave him
too much alone, until she saw how he would bear his solitude, she had
come out into the garden by a door at the other end of the house, and
presently, seeing him in the verandah, approached with a smile.

"Do I look as if I were making myself at home?" he said.

"Quite."

"As soon as I began to smoke, all kinds of things came crowding into my
mind."

"Not u