eyes and looked steadily in his. Her tears stopped.
The old clairvoyant gaze, which he had not seen on her face for many
years, returned.

"No. You will never come back," she said slowly. Then, as one speaking
in a dream, she said still more slowly, and uttering each word with
difficulty and emphasis:

"I--do--not--believe--your--wife--is--dead." Much shocked, and thinking
that these words were merely the utterance of an hysterical excitement,
Dr. Eben replied:

"Not to me, dear child; she never will be: but you must not let
yourself be excited in this way. You will be ill. I must be your doctor
again and prescribe for you."

Rachel continued to watch him, with the same bright and unflinching
gaze. He turned from her, and, bringing her a glass of water in which he
had put a few drops from a vial, said in his old tone:

"Drink this, Rachel."

She obeyed in silence; her eyes drooped; the tension of her whole figure
relaxed; and, with a long sigh, she exclaimed:

"Oh, forgive me!"

"There is nothing to forgive, my child," said the doctor, much moved,
and, longing to throw his arms around her as she sat there, so gentle,
appealing, beautiful, loving. "Why can I not love her?" "What else is
there better in life for me to do?" he thought, but his heart refused.
Hetty, the lost dead Hetty, stood as much between him and all other
women to-day, as she had stood ten years before.

"I must go now, Rachel," he said. "Good-by."

She put her cold hand in his. As he took it, by a curious freak of his
brain, there flashed into his mind the memory of the day when, by the
side of this fragile white little hand lying in his, Hetty, laughingly,
had placed her own, broad and firm and brown. The thought of that hand
of Hetty's, and her laugh at that moment, were too much for him, and he
dropped Rachel's hand abruptly, and moved toward the door. She gave a
low cry: he turned back; she took a step towards him.

"I shall never see you again," she said, taking his hand in hers. "I owe
my life to you," and she carried his hand to her lips, and kissed it
again and again. "God bless you, child! Good-by! good-by!" he said.
Rachel did not speak, and he left her standing there, gazing after him
with a look on her face which haunted him as long as he lived.

Why Doctor Eben should have resolved to sail for England in a Canadian
steamer, and why, having reached Canada, he should have resolved to
postpone his voyage, and make a trial of t