im, propped in her bed with pillows.

'Paul!' He turns.

'Come to me a moment. Sit down beside me. Take my hand'

He lays down the empty pipe he has been twirling in his fingers, and
obeys her.

'Paul!'

'Yes, dear.'

'I cannot talk much,' she says, in her pretty foreign accent

It has been the one ambition of her mind during these three or four
years to speak English like an Englishwoman, and she has very nearly
succeeded, only there is still a rhythm left which is charming to hear.

'I shall not be with you long.'

'What?'says Paul. 'Nonsense, sweetheart! that's a mere sick fancy. Chase
it away.'

'It is no fancy,' says Annette--'no fancy at all. I heard the doctor this
morning. They did not think I could hear, and he was talking with the
housekeeper. He said he feared the worst. You know what that means,
Paul.'

What should he say? A man of ardent blood and active brain does not
live with a jelly-fish for sole home society for a year or two without
a certain weariness, yet his manhood scorned him for it, and even
if passion had never been alive at all there was tenderness and the
camaraderie which comes of close association. He kissed her, and he lied
in kissing her, but it was not a wicked or an evil lie.

'My dear,' he said, 'this is all fancy. You will be well and strong
again in a month or two. I have talked to the doctor, and I can assure
you he has no sort of fear about you. Look here, now. Darco is coming
down to-morrow, and we shall revise our play. Within a week it shall be
finished, and then we will have you packed carefully in cotton-wool and
will carry you back to Paris. Or if you think it will be too cold in
Paris we will take train to Nice, and pass the winter there.'

'No,' she said, 'I shall spend my winter here, and it will be my last.'
Her eyebrows had a pathetic lift, and her gaze was on the sky, beyond
the curtains and the window-panes. 'Paul! Paul dear! Do one thing for
me.' She turned her frightened appealing brown eyes upon him, and stole
her hand softly and timidly into his.

'Yes, dear,' he answered. 'Anything that is in my power--anything.'

She had never seemed so human.

'I shall not live to plague you,' said Annette. 'You are strong and
brave and clever, and you have ambitions, you big boy, and I have been a
weight about your neck.'

'No, no, no!' he cried.

'Oh yes,' she answered mournfully. 'I know it I have seen it all along.
But all that will soon be over. Only