ible way, crying, and--well, actually
fighting me. Then the Rigor came on."

"I'll run for the doctor," he said. He had an aghast face.

"All done. He's here. He's waiting for you to carry Vera to bed."

"Let him carry her himself!" Everard said, fiercely. "Look here, I'm
best out of this. I'll go and dine somewhere."

"My dear, you can't run away like that," she said, and, of course,
prevailed.

It was as Lucilla had said. Vera was rigid. She looked up at Everard
with a smile of satisfaction at that fact. "What do you think of me
now?" it seemed to ask. "Am I the sort of woman to turn your back on,
and neglect?--a woman who at once becomes as stiff as a broomstick?"

"She must be got upstairs and undressed," the doctor said to Barett.

"Lean on me and try to walk," Barett implored the patient.

She gave a defiant smile. "If my life depended on it I could not move a
toe," she said.

"If I took her head, and you her feet?" Everard suggested to the
doctor--a plan at once negatived by Vera.

"I won't be carried in that fashion," she said. "I am not a long woman,
like Luce," she added. "Fred carries me with perfect ease."

"I think you can manage it, Mr Barett," the doctor said.

There was no help for it. Everard stooped to the task. He ought to have
been a happy man, perhaps, with that burden in his arms. It was not as
such he described himself to his wife afterwards.

Halfway up the stairs he tripped, and she screamed.

"Grip me! Grip me! Don't let me drop over the balusters!" she called.

He laboured on, the cords bursting in his forehead, his legs bending,
his throat swelling, his arms two seats of agony. Lucilla, who had gone
before, cleared the mats out of his way. "It isn't much farther," she
whispered.

"He is not grasping me right," Mrs Butt cried in a terrified voice.
"It's not how Fred grasps me. I am as easy as a child when he carries
me. Oh! I shall drop--he is going to let me drop!"

He thought he was, but made a superhuman effort, and tottered on.
Having reached level ground he stopped, then started on again with a
staggering run. In piloting her through the bedroom door he banged her
head against the frame, and Vera gave a howl of rage and pain.

The next minute she found herself hurled upon the bed.

She remained as she fell, upon her face, uttering suffocating moans of
angry shame and misery.

Everard waited not a second to watch her there. He reeled from the
room, and reaching the