that I want." When he could eat and drink no more, he rolled
up his napkin into a ball, and became devoutly thankful. "How goot of
Gott," he remarked, "when he invented the worlds to invent eatings and
drinkings too! Ah!" sighed Herr Grosse, gently laying his outspread
fingers on the pit of his stomach, "what immense happiness there is in
This!"

Mr. Sebright looked at his watch.

"If there is anything more to be said on the question of the operation,"
he announced, "it must be said at once. We have barely five minutes more
to spare. You have heard my opinion. I hold to it."

Herr Grosse took a pinch of snuff. "I also," he said, "hold to mine."

Lucilla turned towards the place from which Mr. Sebright had spoken.

"I am obliged to you, sir, for your opinion," she said, very quietly and
firmly. "I am determined to try the operation. If it does fail, it will
only leave me what I am now. If it succeeds, it gives me a new life. I
will bear anything, and risk anything, on the chance that I may see."

So, she announced her decision. In those memorable words, she cleared the
way for the coming Event in her life and in our lives, which it is the
purpose of these pages to record.

Mr. Sebright answered her, in Mr. Sebright's discreet way.

"I cannot affect to be surprised at your decision," he said. "However
sincerely I may regret it, I admit that it is the natural decision, in
your case."

Lucilla addressed herself next to Herr Grosse.

"Choose your own day," she said. "The sooner, the better. To-morrow, if
you can."

"Answer me one little thing, Miss," rejoined the German, with a sudden
gravity of tone and manner which was quite new in our experience of him.
"Do you mean what you say?"

She answered him gravely on her side. "I mean what I say."

"Goot. There is times, my lofe, to be funny. There is also times to be
grave. It is grave-times now. I have my last word to say to you before I
go."

With his wild black eyes staring through his owlish spectacles at
Lucilla's face, speaking earnestly in his strange broken English, he now
impressed on his patient the necessity of gravely considering, and
preparing for, the operation which he had undertaken to perform.

I was greatly relieved by the tone he took with her. He spoke with
authority: she would be obliged to listen to him.

In the first place, he warned Lucilla, if the operation failed, that
there would be no possibility of returning to it, and trying it ag