fort for her to act the part of a wife toward
him. Day by day she felt that his interests lay beyond her reach, and
that all the tenderness in his manner toward her came from a sense of
duty, not from love.

But she strove in all ways to be a faithful wife, and he tried hard to
be a kind and devoted husband. He had been especially attentive to her
of late, for her health had been failing, and the old doctor had
shaken his head very gravely over her. For a week or more she had
grown steadily worse, and was now unable even to walk without help.
Her malady was one of those that sap away the life with a swift and
deadly power against which all human skill seems unavailing.

Mr. Grey on returning from church entered the living room. The invalid
sat at the window, a heavy shawl wrapped about her, her pale face
turned to the far blue line of sea, visible through a gap in the
hills. A pang wrenched his heart keenly at the sight. Why _would_ she
always sit at that window looking so sorrowfully, so abstractedly at
the sea, as if her heart was buried there with her dead lover?

She started as she heard his footstep, and turned her head quickly
toward him, a faint flush tinging her cheek and a forced smile
quivering around her lips. Her greeting was very gentle, and he saw
that her heart was reproaching her for being so disloyal to him as to
think of her lost lover; and yet he felt her fingers tremble and
shrink away from his as he took her hand.

"God forgive me!" he thought, with infinite self-accusation. "How
repugnant I must be to her,--an intruder, thrusting myself into the
heart that is sacred to the dead."

But he let her see nothing of this in his voice or manner as he
inquired how she had been. She replied wearily that she was no better,
that she longed to get well again and be at work.

"I missed your sermon to-day," she said, with that strained, pathetic
smile upon her lips again. "You must tell me about it now."

He drew his chair to her side and began to give an outline of the
sermon. She listened, but it was with forced attention, without
sympathy, without in the least entering into the spirit of what he was
saying. It pained him. He knew that her nature was so narrow, so
conventional, that it was impossible for her to comprehend his grand
scheme of Indian evangelization. But he checked his impatience, and
gave her a full synopsis of the discourse.

"It is useless, useless. They cannot understand. A whole rac