I began, but it appeared that Miss Jencks felt unequal
to it. So Harriet told her, of course, on the principle that when one
has a heavy load he may as well carry a little more, I suppose.

And after all it wasn't so bad; for Margarita came down to me a little
later, and told me she had known it all the time!

"But, of course, dear child," I said hopefully, "Doctor ---- is not a
throat specialist, you know, and we can but try some of those famous
fellows, a little later. Perhaps in a year or two----"

"You are very good to me, Jerry," she said, "but it is no use. I know.
I shall never sing again. I am sorry, because----"

"Sorry?" I cried, "why, of course you are sorry! What do you mean?"

"Because," she continued placidly, "it will not be so much to give
Roger."

"Give Roger?" I echoed stupidly, "how 'give Roger'?"

"I was not going to sing any more, anyway," she said.

For a moment I was dazed and then the simplicity of it all flashed
over me.

"Why, Margarita!" I cried--and that is all the comment I ever made.

"That was what I wanted to tell him when he did not know me," she
explained. "I--I was going to tell him the night--the night it
happened."

"And does he know it now?"

"Of course. That is why he got well," she said promptly.

And do you know, I'm not sure she was wrong? That life was killing
him--I mean it ran across his instincts and feeling and beliefs, every
way.

There was no doubt she meant it. She never referred to the subject
again.

He wanted her to see somebody else about her throat, but she
absolutely refused to leave the Island till he was out of bed--Sarah
came on with the baby two weeks later--and they sat by him all day
nearly, the two of them, and he hardly let go her hand. He had changed
a great deal in one way--his hair was quite silvered. But it was very
becoming.

I didn't leave till I saw him in a dressing-gown in a long chair by
the fire. Harriet went back to her hospital, and when Roger was up to
it they went South for a bit before he began to work again.

The day before I left he did an odd thing--one of the two or three
impractical, sentimental things I ever knew him to do in his life. He
asked me to bring him his history of Napoleon--it had been packed into
their luggage by mistake--and deliberately laid it on the heart of the
fire! I cried out and leaned forward to snatch it--to think of the
labour it represented!--but he put his hand on my arm.

"Don't, Jerry