flesh rather than of spirit, yet, in its very
unconsciousness, almost sinister. For a moment, as the lines of the
sharp new perception etched themselves, lines gossamer-like in fineness,
floating, transforming shadows rather than lines, he was afraid of his
wife, afraid of the alien, mysterious force he guessed in her.

For the delicately sinister subtlety was remote from his understanding,
was a subtlety that no man's face can show, capable as it is of a
grossness and corruption merely animal by contrast; open and obvious.
Kitty's subtlety did not make her animal: it made her more than ever
like an angel; but an ambiguous angel; and to feel that he did not
understand her made her strange. It was no clue to feel that she did not
understand herself; it was only a further depth of mystery.

He was ashamed of his own folly in another moment, ashamed of an insight
distorted and distorting, so he told himself. Over and above all such
morbidities was the fact that Kitty was looking at him with the eyes of
a frightened child--a real child.

The reaction from his fear, the recognition of her fear, stirred in him
a love more personal than any of the vast benevolences that he had
felt. He went to her and led her to the window-seat where, sitting down
himself, holding both her hands in his and looking up at her standing
before him, he said with the quiet of long-prepared words: "Kitty, dear,
I have something that I want to tell you and that will make you, I
think, a little sad. We have had happy times together, haven't we? It
isn't all regret. You and I are going to part, Kitty."

She gazed at him and terror widened her eyes. She could not speak. She
did not move. Her hands in his hands seemed dead.

He saw in a moment what the fear was that showed itself in this torpor
of apprehension, and he hastened on so that she should not, in her
dread, reveal the secret that need never be spoken.

"I'm going to die, Kitty," he said, "I had my sentence yesterday, from
Dr. Farebrother. I never dreamed that it was anything serious, that
complaint of mine, you know,--never dreamed it even when it began to
trouble me a good deal, as it has of late. But it's not what I thought.
It's fatal; and it will gallop now. He gives me one month--at the very
most, two months." He spoke deliberately, though swiftly, and, as he
finished, he smiled up at her, a reassuring smile. His wife's dilated
eyes, fixed on him, made him flush a little in the ensuin