seemed to smile a last farewell till unconsciousness possessed him.

As before, Mavis called in the most expensive medical advice, which
told her that nothing could be done. It appeared that Harold's spine
had commenced to curve in such a manner that his lungs were seriously
affected. It was only a question of months before the slight thread, by
which his life hung, would be snapped. Mavis knew of many cases in
which enfeebled lungs had been bolstered up for quite a long time by a
change to suitable climates; she was eager to know if the same held
good in her husband's case.

"Oh yes," said the great specialist. "There were parts of South Africa
where the veld air was so rarefied that a patient with scarcely any
lung at all might live for several years. But--"

"But what?" asked Mavis.

"If I may say so, he will never be other than what he now is. Would it
be advisable to prolong--?"

The expression on Mavis's face stopped him short in the middle of his
question.

"Of course, if you've decided to send him, it's quite another matter,"
he went on. "In that case, you cannot be too careful in seeing he has
the most reliable attendants procurable."

Mavis hesitated the fraction of a second before replying:

"I should go with him."

It needed only that brief moment for Mavis to make up her mind. She
would do her utmost to prolong her husband's life; she would accompany
him wherever he went to obtain this end.

In making this last resolve, Mavis knew well the trials and discomforts
to which she would expose herself. Her well-ordered days, her present
existence, which seemed to run on oiled wheels, the friends and
refinements with which she had surrounded herself, the more
particularly appealed to her when contrasted with the lean years of her
earlier life. Her days of want, joined to her natural inclinations, had
created a hunger for the good things of the earth, which her present
opulence had not yet stayed. She still held out her hands to grasp the
beautiful, satisfying things which money, guided by a mind of some
force and a natural refinement, can buy. Therefore, it was a
considerable sacrifice for Mavis to give up the advantage she not only
possessed, but keenly appreciated, to tend a man who was a physical and
mental wreck, in a part of the world remote from civilising influences.
But, together with her grief for the loss of her boy, there lived in
her heart an immense and ineradicable remorse for having mar