have this of merciful, that a term is set for them. Her malady
though it often maims cruelly rarely kills. The temperature line on the
chart, which for days had described a Himalaya, dwindled suddenly to a
Sierra, as quickly to an Appalachian, and then became a level plain.
Terribly wracked by the ordeal but safe they pronounced her. The visiting
physician occasionally omitted her in his daily round. But convalescence
was more trying than the struggle with the fever. The lethargic hours
seldom brought either sleep or rest. Beset by nervous fears, the
collective suffering of the giant building weighed upon her, and she
begged to be taken home.

It was a pathetic triumphal entry that she made among their household
gods. The sheer grotesqueness of her home struck her painfully for the
first time, as she was helped to an ancient chair that stood before the
suspended Kirman rug--her throne John had always called it. As she once
more occupied it, there came a curious revulsion against her gorgeously
shabby domain. Other women, she reflected, had neat places, cool expanses
of wallpaper, furniture seemly set apart. She resented the stuffiness of
it all, the air of musty preciousness that pervaded the room. And when
John took both her hands and said: "Now the collection is itself again;
the queen has come home," she broke down and cried. She did much of that
in the weeks that followed. You would have supposed her another person
than plucky Miriam Baxter. But the situation hardly made for
cheerfulness. Light housekeeping being no longer practicable, they
depended on the unwilling ministrations of a slovenly maid. John, who, to
do him justice, had never boasted much surplus vitality, felt vaguely
that something was now due from him that he could not supply. To escape
an inadequacy that was painful he drifted back to the exhibitions and
sales, this time alone. He never bought anything, for he was saving
manfully for a purpose that daily increased in his mind. He would pay
with his pocketbook what with his person he could not.

His always modest luncheon reduced itself to a sandwich, he walked to
save carfares, cut off two Sunday newspapers, wore a threadbare spring
overcoat into the winter. Then one day he took Miriam to a famous
specialist from whom they learned very much what they already knew, but
with the advantage of working orders. The great man told John in brief
that it was a bad recovery which might readily become worse. A