s trying to disfigure his
liver and make spots come out all over inside him? Do you?"

Siward smiled again, a worn, pallid smile.

"I can stand it while you are here, doctor, but when I'm alone
it's--hard. One of those crises is close now. I've a bad night ahead--a
bad outlook. Couldn't you--"

"No!"

"Just enough--"

"No, Stephen."

"--Enough to dull it--just a little? I don't ask for enough to make
me sleep--not even to make me doze. You have your needle; haven't you,
doctor?"

"Yes."

"Then, just this once--for the last time."

"No."

"Why? Are you afraid? You needn't be, doctor. I don't care for it except
to give me a little respite, a little rest on a night like this. I'm so
tired of this ache. If I could only have some sleep, and wake up in good
shape, I'd stand a better chance of fighting. ... Wait, doctor! Just one
moment. I don't mean to be a coward, but I've had a hard fight, and--I'm
tired. ... If you could see your way to helping me--"

"I dare not help you any more that way."

"Not this once?"

"Not this once."

There was a dead silence, broken at last by the doctor with a violent
gesture toward the telephone. "Talk to the girl! Why don't you talk to
the girl! If she's worth a hill o' beans she'll help you to hang on.
What's she for, if she isn't for such moments? Tell her you need her
voice; tell her you need her faith in you. Damn central! Talk out in
church! Don't make a goddess of a woman. The men who want to marry her,
and can't, will do that! The nincompoop can always be counted on to
deify the commonplace. And she is commonplace. If she isn't, she's no
good! Commend me to sanity and the commonplace. I take off my hat to it!
I honour it. God bless it! Good-night!"

Siward lay still for a long while after the doctor had gone. More than
an hour had passed before he slowly sat up and groped for the telephone
book, opened it, and searched in a blind, hesitating way until he found
the number he was looking for.

He had never telephoned to her; he had never written her except once,
in reply to her letter in regard to his mother's death--that strange,
timid, formal letter, in which, grief-stunned as he was, he saw only
the formality, and had answered it more formally still. And that was all
that had come of the days and nights by that northern sea--a letter and
its answer, and silence.

And, thinking of these things, he shut the book wearily, and lay back in
the shadow of the faded c