r me."

"The children are upstairs. Won't you--won't you let them in?"

"Let them stay upstairs. Philippa! What is the matter?"

Her time was come--that was the matter. By noon their fourth child was
born.

When the nurse came to the sitting-room door, she found Geoffrey pacing
round and round like some wild creature in a cage.

"Mr. Ford, sir?"

He looked round with a start.

"Yes, nurse."

"Mrs. Ford would like to see you, sir."

"To see me? Oh! Is she well enough?"

"Well, sir, she's not so well as she might be. But she says that it
would do her good to see you. Only you musn't let her talk too much, nor
yet you musn't stay too long."

"I won't stay too long."

He went upstairs. He paused for a moment outside the bedroom door. Then
he entered the room.

"_Geoff, I'm going to die!_"

Her words so frightened him that, in the suddenness of his fear, he
staggered backwards.

"To die!"

"All along I knew that I should. I knew it when I was writing that
wicked book--the book which has won the prize, I mean. Perhaps that was
why I wrote it. It is the best way out of the trouble. I should never
have been the same wife to you again. I know you so well. But, Geoffrey,
you won't refuse to accept a legacy from me when I am dead. It is the
only thing I have ever had to give you. For the children's sake, and the
little baby's sake, and mine."

He sat on a chair by the bedside, trying to hold himself in, as it were,
with every muscle of his body.

"Philippa, you musn't talk like that."

"If you'll forgive me, Geoff, I'll be content--only promise that you'll
accept my legacy."

"Not if you die, I won't."

"Geoff!"

"I'll accept it if you live."

Holding the baby in his arms, he knelt beside the bed. She turned to
him. They were face to face. As he began to perceive how she had wasted
to a shadow, it did not seem as if he could read enough of the story
which was told upon her face. She, in her turn, did not seem as if she
could gaze long enough at him.

"Geoffrey, do you really mean that if I live, and get well, really and
truly well, you will take me for your wife again--that I shall be to you
the same wife that I have always been?"

"Philippa, if one of us is to die for the other, let me be the one to
die."

"Geoff, I do believe that if there is anything which must be done, you
must be the one to do it. Can't you understand, that if you love to do
great things for me, I, also, love to do great