end. I had not the right
to inflict such intolerable pain on one so near and dear to me.

Besides, I am vain enough to want to walk forth somewhat gallantly into
eternity; and while I yet live I particularly desire that folks should
not regard me as half-dead. I defy you to treat a man who is only going
to live twenty weeks in the same pleasant fashion as you would a man who
has the run of life before him.

There is always an instinctive shrinking from decay. I should think that
corpses must feel their position acutely.

It was entirely for Eleanor's sake that I refrained from taking her into
my confidence. To her question I replied that I had not the right to
tie her for life to a helpless valetudinarian. "Besides," said I, "as
my health grows worse my jokes will deteriorate, until I am reduced to
grinning through a horse-collar at the doctor. And you couldn't stand
that, could you?"

She upbraided me gently for treating everything as a jest.

"It isn't that you want to get rid of me, Simon?" she asked tearfully,
but with an attempt at a smile.

I took both hands and looked into her eyes--they are brave, truthful
eyes--and through my heart shot a great pain. Till that moment I had not
realised what I was giving up. The pleasant paths of the world--I could
leave them behind with a shrug. Political ambition, power, I could
justly estimate their value and could let them pass into other hands
without regret. But here was the true, staunch woman, great of heart and
wise, a helper and a comrade, and, if I chose to throw off the jester
and become the lover in real earnest and sweep my hand across the
hidden chords, all that a woman can become towards the man she loves. I
realised this.

I realised that if she did not love me passionately now it was only
because I, in my foolishness, had willed it otherwise. For the first
time I longed to have her as my own; for the first time I rebelled.
I looked at her hungeringly until her cheeks grew red and her eyelids
fluttered. I had a wild impulse to throw my arms around her, and kiss
her as I had never kissed her before and bid her forget all that I had
said that day. Her faltering eyes told me that they read my longing. I
was about to yield when the little devil of a pain inside made itself
sharply felt and my madness went from me. I fetched a thing half-way
between a sigh and a groan, and dropped her hands.

"Need I answer your question?" I asked.

She turned her head as