ause I
can't live. It's only a question of months, perhaps weeks. Nobody could
blame you, could they? People don't laugh when--it's death. It
simplifies things so--doesn't it?"

She smiled, and nestled to him again.

"What do you mean?" he said, almost violently. "Why are you so ill?"

"It was Bosnia first, and then--being miserable--I suppose. And Poitiers
was very cold--and the nuns very stuffy, bless them--they wouldn't let
me have air enough."

He groaned aloud while he remembered his winter in London, in the
forlorn luxury of the Park Lane house.

"Where have you been?" he repeated.

"Oh! I went to the Soeurs Blanches--you remember?--where I used to be.
You went there, didn't you?"--he made a sign of miserable assent--"but I
made them promise not to tell! There was an old mistress of novices
there still who used to be very fond of me. She got one of the houses of
the Sacre Coeur to take me in--at Poitiers. They thought they were
gathering a stray sheep back into the fold, you understand, as I was
brought up a Catholic--of sorts. And I didn't mind!" The familiar
intonation, soft, complacent, humorous, rose like a ghost between them.
"I used to like going to mass. But this Easter they wanted to make me
'go to my duties'--you know what it means?--and I wouldn't. I wanted to
confess." She shuddered and drew his face down to hers again--"but only
once--to--you--and then, well then, to die, and have done with it. You
see, I knew one can't get on long with three-quarters of a lung. And
they were rather tiresome--they didn't understand. So three weeks ago I
drew some money out and said good-bye to them. Oh! they were very kind,
and very sorry for me. They wanted me to take a maid, and I meant to.
But the one they found wouldn't come with me when she saw how ill I
was--and it all lingered on--so one day I just walked out to the
railway-station and went to Paris. But Paris was rainy--and I felt I
must see the sun again. So I stayed two nights at a little hotel maman
used to go to--horrid place!--and each night I read your speeches in the
reading-room--and then I got my things from Poitiers, and started--"

A fit of coughing stopped her, coughing so terrible and destructive that
he almost rushed for help. But she restrained him. She made him
understand that she wanted certain remedies from her own room across the
corridor. He went for them. The door of this room had been shut by the
observant Dell, who was watching th