red; they have made the baggage weigh more
every time."

"And I've forgotten mine. Yes, I have. But the years haven't forgotten
me, Basil, and now I remember them. I'm tired. It doesn't seem as if
I could ever get up. But I dare say it's only a mood; it may be only a
cold; and if you wish to stay, why--we will think it over."

"No, we won't, my dear," he said, with a generous shame for his
hypocrisy if not with a pure generosity. "I've got all the good out of
it that there was in it, for me, and I shouldn't go home any better six
months hence than I should now. Italy will keep for another time, and
so, for the matter of that, will Holland."

"No, no!" she interposed. "We won't give up Holland, whatever we do. I
couldn't go home feeling that I had kept you out of your after-cure; and
when we get there, no doubt the sea air will bring me up so that I shall
want to go to Italy, too, again. Though it seems so far off, now! But
go and see when the afternoon train for the Hague leaves, and I shall be
ready. My mind's quite made up on that point."

"What a bundle of energy!" said her husband laughing down at her.

He went and asked about the train to the Hague, but only to satisfy a
superficial conscience; for now he knew that they were both of one mind
about going home. He also looked up the trains for London, and found
that they could get there by way of Ostend in fourteen hours. Then
he went back to the banker's, and with the help of the Paris-New
York Chronicle which he found there, he got the sailings of the first
steamers home. After that he strolled about the streets for a last
impression of Dusseldorf, but it was rather blurred by the constantly
recurring pull of his thoughts toward America, and he ended by turning
abruptly at a certain corner, and going to his hotel.

He found his wife dressed, but fallen again on her bed, beside which
her breakfast stood still untasted; her smile responded wanly to his
brightness. "I'm not well, my dear," she said. "I don't believe I could
get off to the Hague this afternoon."

"Could you to Liverpool?" he returned.

"To Liverpool?" she gasped. "What do you mean?"

"Merely that the Cupania is sailing on the twentieth, and I've
telegraphed to know if we can get a room. I'm afraid it won't be a good
one, but she's the first boat out, and--"

"No, indeed, we won't go to Liverpool, and we will never go home till
you've had your after-cure in Holland." She was very firm in this