us understand each other, doctor. If I go
away, you tell me my life will be prolonged--do you mean for years?"
Dr. Broderick shook his head.

"Oh, I see"--but David tried not to look at his father's pinched, white
face--"you mean months probably?"

"Yes--yes," returned the doctor hurriedly; "with care, and under
favourable circumstances, there might be no further breakdown for
another year; but"--with a keen look at his patient--"I will not
undertake to promise this."

"I quite understand," returned David quietly. "Dr. Broderick, I am
sorry, but I cannot take your prescription. They sent my mother to
Davos Platz--there seemed hope for her--and she died away from us all;
and one of my sisters died at Mentone too. But I do not intend to
follow their example;" and then he had risen from his chair and put an
end to the interview.

Nothing would induce him to go abroad. Even when Elizabeth promised
that she and Dinah would go too, his resolution to remain in England
had been unshaken.

"Why should I let them sacrifice themselves for me?" he said to his
father. "Am I not bringing trouble enough on Elizabeth? Why did I ever
speak to her? I was mad to let her engage herself to me--I might have
known how it would be!" And that day David's despondency was very great.

But at other times he made heroic efforts to hide his deep inward
sadness from Elizabeth. He was so young, and the love of life was so
strong within him, and the thought of disease and death so terrible.
Sometimes in the dark hours of the winter's night, when his racking
cough would not let him sleep, he wrestled with his despair as
Christian wrestled with Apollyon.

"A soldier who refuses wounds and death," he would say to himself--"a
minister of Christ who fears to tread in his Master's footsteps, what
is he but a coward and deserter--and I am both!"

And then the torrent of his human passion would sweep over his
soul--his love for Elizabeth, the knowledge that but for this
hereditary malady he would have had the blessed certainty of calling
her wife!

What a noble life they two would have lived! What plans of
unselfishness they had formed! How the treasures of their happiness
would have overflowed and fertilised other and more barren lives! And
now not life but death claimed him!

Ah, no wonder if his human weakness blenched at the prospect, if his
heart at times quailed and grew sick within him; for when one is young
and happy it is not easy to die