, then, I won't. I will ask him to send what I want in a cab; and
then, when I am declared capable of managing my own affairs, I will go
into town and see him. But the fact is, that I really feel as well as
ever I did in my life!"

"You may feel it, but it is not the case."

And later in the day, Alan was obliged to confess that he had boasted
too soon, for there was a slight return of fever, and the doctor whom
Lettice had called in was more emphatic than she had been as to the
necessity for complete rest of mind and body.

So for the next week he was treated quite as an invalid, to his great
disgust. Then he fairly turned the corner, and things began to change
for the better again. Lettice read to him, talked, played chess, found
out his tastes in music and in art (tastes in some respects a little
primitive, but singularly fine and true, in spite of their want of
training), and played his favorite airs for him on the piano--some of
Mendelssohn's plaintive Lieder, the quainter and statelier measures of
Corelli and Scarlatti, snatches of Schumann and Grieg, and several older
and simpler melodies, for most of which he had to ask by humming a few
bars which had impressed themselves on his memory.

As the month wore itself out, the success of Lettice's experiment was in
a fair way of being justified. She had charmed the evil spirit of
despair from Alan's breast, and had won him back to manly resistance and
courageous effort. With returning bodily strength came a greater
robustness of mind, and a resolution--borrowed, perhaps, in the first
instance, from his companion--to be stronger than his persecutors, and
rise superior to his troubles.

In the conversations which grew out of their daily readings, Lettice was
careful to draw him as much as possible into literary discussions and
criticisms, and Alan found himself dwelling to an appreciative listener
on certain of his own ideas on poetic and dramatic methods. There is but
a step from methods to instances; and when Lettice came into his room
one morning--she never showed herself before mid-day--she saw with
delight on the paper before him an unmistakable stream of verses
meandering down the middle of the sheet.

He had set to work! Then he was saved--saved from himself, and from the
ghouls that harbor in a desolate and outraged mind.

If, beyond this, you ask me how she had gained her end, and done the
good thing on which she had set her heart, I cannot tell you, any