ry best place for you to
come to, and that the waters would do you all the good in the world."

"I wonder if we need," said Rachel. "I am sure it is the kind of thing
you hate."

"It is not for very long, after all," said Rendel, trying to smile.

He was gradually regaining possession of himself, but was still afraid
to trust himself to utter any but the most commonplace and ordinary
sentences.

"The moment I have done the cure," said Rachel, "we'll go back to
London, won't we? And you can begin your work again, and do all the
things you like. And then," she went on with an attempt at lightness of
tone, "you can go back to your beloved politics, and think of nothing
else all day." And she went on talking of their house, of their arrival,
of what they would do, in a forlorn little attempt to show him that she
meant to try to shoulder life valiantly, although it had been so
altered. "You will stand for somewhere. You will go into the House."

Rendel thought of what the life might have been that she was sketching,
and what it was going to be now. What he had gone through that day was
an earnest probably of what awaited him many a time if he should try to
lead his life as he used to lead it, among the people who were congenial
to him.

"No," he said, "I'm not going to stand. I'm not going into the House. I
shan't have anything to do with politics."

"What?" said Rachel, looking at him startled.

"All that, is at an end," he said firmly. Then with the relief of
speaking, came the irresistible desire to go on, to tell her something
at least of what his fate was, although he might not tell the thing that
mattered most.

"Do you remember," he said, "something that I told you had happened----"
he broke off, then began again. "Tell me," he said, impelled to ask,
"how much you remember, if you remember anything, of those days when
your father was so ill, at the end, just before he died, or is it still
a blank to you?"

Rachel shuddered.

"No, I can't remember," she said. "The last thing I remember clearly is
one afternoon when he was beginning to be worse and had to go upstairs
again; and I remember nothing more after that till," and her voice
trembled, "till--a day that I woke up in bed and wanted to go to him,
and you told me that--that he was dead. The rest of that time is a
blank."

"How extraordinary it is!" muttered Rendel to himself.

"I did not even know," said Rachel, "that I had fallen on the stairs,
un