irl, I must have given her an awful fright," said James.

"Well, you are not exactly the looking object to do anything else," said
Gordon laughing.

"Where is there a glass?"

"Where you won't have it. You won't be scarred. It is simply a temporary
eclipse of your beauty, and Clemency will love you all the more for it.
You need not worry. Talk about the vanity of women. I thought you were
above it, Elliot. Now lie still. If you get up you will be giddy."

James lay still, smiling. He felt very happy, and his love for Clemency
seemed like a glow of pure radiance in his heart. He lay on the office
lounge all the afternoon. He fell asleep with Clemency sitting beside
holding his hand. Gordon had gone out to finish the calls. It was six
o'clock before he drove into the yard. James had just awakened and lay
feeling a great peace and content. Clemency was smiling down at his
discolored face, as if it were the face of an angel. The windows were
open, and the distant lowing of cattle, waiting at homeward bars, the
monotone of frogs, and the songs of circling swallows came in. James
felt as if he saw in a celestial vision the whole world and life, and
that it was all blessed and good, that even the pain and sorrow
blossomed in the end into ineffable flowers of pure delight.

But when Doctor Gordon entered this vision was clouded, for Gordon's
face had reassumed its old expression of settled melancholy and despair.
He inquired how James found himself with an apathetic air, and then sat
down and mechanically filled his pipe. After it was filled he seemed to
forget to light it, so deep was his painful reverie. He sat with it in
hand, staring straight ahead. Then a strange thing happened. The office
door opened and Mrs. Blair, the nurse, entered. She was dressed in
black, she carried a black travelling bag, and she wore a black bonnet,
with a high black tuft on the top by way of trimming. Mrs. Blair was
very tall, and this black tuft, when she entered the door, barely grazed
the lintel.

Gordon rose and said good evening, and regarded her in a bewildered
fashion, as did James and Clemency.

Mrs. Blair spoke with no preface. "I am going to leave Alton," she said
in her severe voice, "and I want to tell you something first, and to say
good-by." She looked at Gordon, then at the others, one after another,
then at Gordon again. "I did not think at first that it would be
necessary for me to say what I am going to," she continued,