ourself to the
Riviera," sang out the doctor.

The door closed behind the eminent man, and Tyson went out immediately
afterwards.

He came home late that night, and she did not see him till the afternoon
of the following day, when he turned into the dining-room on his way out
of the house. He was nervously polite, and apologized for having an
appointment. She noticed that he looked tired and ill; but there was
another look in his face that robbed it of the pathos of illness, and she
saw that too.

"Nevill," said she, "I wish you'd go away for a bit."

"Where do you want me to go to?"

"Oh, anywhere." She considered a moment. "You'll be ill if you stop here.
You ought to go ever so far away. A sea-voyage would be the very thing."

"It wouldn't do me much good to go sea-voyaging by myself."

For a second her face brightened. "No--but--I shall be quite strong in
another fortnight--and then--I could go out to you wherever you were, and
we could come back together, couldn't we?"

There was no answer.

"You might go--to please me."

He laughed shortly. "I might go to please myself. But what's the good of
talking about it when you know I can't."

"Well, if you'd rather wait, there's the Riviera"--he colored
violently--"would that do for you?"

"Yes; I think it _would_ 'do' for me--just about."

"Well--anywhere then. If I'm well enough to go to the Riviera, I'm--"

"You're not well enough to go to the Riviera."

"What makes you think that?" she asked gravely.

He looked away and muttered something about "Thompson," and "the
journey." Again that look of agonized comprehension!

She said nothing. She knew that he had lied. Ah, to what pitiful shifts
she had driven him!

He hurried off to his appointment, and she lay on her couch by the window
with clenched hands and closed eyelids. She had no sensations to speak
of; but thought came to her--confused, overwhelming thought--an agony
of ideas. She loved him. Ah, the shame of it! And that hidden hope of
hers became a terror. Mrs. Nevill Tyson's soul was struggling with its
immortality. The hot flare of summer was in the streets and in the
room; the old life was surging everywhere around her; above the brutal
roar and gust of it, blown from airy squares, flung back from throbbing
thoroughfares, she caught responsive voices, rhythmic, inarticulate
murmurs, ripples of the resonant joy of the world. Down there, in their
dim greenery, the very plane-trees were whisp