years--with that
indescribable look in the eyes which seemed to divine and confirm all
those terrors which had been shaking her during her agonised waiting,
there followed a moment between them which words cannot render. When it
ended--that half-articulate convulsion of love and anguish--she found
herself sitting on the sofa beside him, his head on her breast, his hand
clasping hers.

'Do you wish me to go, Catherine?' he asked her gently,--'to Algiers?'

Her eyes implored for her.

'Then I will,' he said, but with a long sigh. 'It will only prolong it
two months,' he thought; 'and does one not owe it to the people for whom
one has tried to live, to make a brave end among them? Ah, no! no! those
two months are _hers_!'

So, without any outward resistance, he let the necessary preparations be
made. It wrung his heart to go, but he could not wring hers by staying.

After his interview with Robert, and his further interview with
Catherine, to whom he gave the most minute recommendations and
directions, with a reverent gentleness which seemed to make the true
state of the case more ghastly plain to the wife than ever, Edmondson
went off to Flaxman.

Flaxman heard his news with horror.

'A _bad_ case, you say--advanced?'

'A bad case!' Edmondson repeated gloomily. 'He has been fighting against
it too long under that absurd delusion of clergyman's throat. If only
men would not insist upon being their own doctors! And, of course, that
going down to Murewell the other day was madness. I shall go with him to
Algiers, and probably stay a week or two. To think of that life, that
career, cut short! This is a queer sort of world!'

When Flaxman went over to Bedford Square in the afternoon, he went like
a man going himself to execution. In the hall he met Catherine.

'You have seen Dr. Edmondson?' she asked, pale and still, except for a
little nervous quivering of the lip.

He stooped and kissed her hand.

'Yes. He says he goes with you to Algiers. I will come after if you will
have me. The climate may do wonders.'

She looked at him with the most heart-rending of smiles.

'Will you go in to Robert? He is in the study.'

He went, in trepidation, and found Robert lying tucked up on the sofa,
apparently reading.

'Don't--don't, old fellow,' he said affectionately, as Flaxman almost
broke down. 'It comes to all of us sooner or later. Whenever it comes we
think it too soon. I believe I have been sure of it for some t