ave been much good without all your care
before they came. I had turned the corner a week ago--I felt it myself."

Joseph grinned--an honest, open grin of self-satisfaction. He was not
one of those persons who like their praise bestowed with subtlety.

"Wonderful!" he repeated to himself as he went to the well in the
garden for his master's bath-water. "Wonderful! but I don't understand
things--not bein' a marryin' man."

During the last few days Jack's progress had been rapid enough even to
satisfy Joseph. The doctor expressed himself fully reassured, and even
spoke of returning no more. But he repeated his wish that Jack should
leave for England without delay.

"He is quite strong enough to be moved now," he finished by saying.
"There is no reason for further delay."

"No," answered Jocelyn, to whom the order was spoken. "No--none. We will
see that he goes by the next boat."

The doctor paused. He was a young man who took a strong--perhaps too
strong--a personal interest in his patients. Jocelyn had walked with him
as far as the gate, with only a parasol to protect her from the evening
sun. They were old friends. The doctor's wife was one of Jocelyn's
closest friends on the Coast.

"Do you know anything about Meredith's future movements?" he asked.
"Does he intend to come out here again?"

"I could not tell you. I do not think they have settled yet. But I think
that when he gets home he will probably stay there."

"Best thing he can do--best thing he can do. It will never do for him to
risk getting another taste of malaria--tell him so, will you? Good-bye."

"Yes, I will tell him."

And Jocelyn Gordon walked slowly back to tell the man she loved that he
must go away from her and never come back. The last few days had been
days of complete happiness. There is no doubt that women have the power
of enjoying the present to a greater degree than men. They can live in
the bliss of the present moment with eyes continually averted from the
curtain of the near future which falls across that bliss and cuts
it off. Men allow the presence of the curtain to mar the present
brightness.

These days had been happier for Jocelyn than for Jack, because she was
conscious of the fulness of every moment, while he was merely rejoicing
in comfort after hardship, in pleasant society after loneliness. Even
with the knowledge that it could not last, that beyond the near future
lay a whole lifetime of complete solitude and that gr