y
less peculiarly healthy spot than Joppa. How was it that at the very
last, when there was no reason at all, when she had been apparently so
perfectly well all along, Phebe Lane should suddenly take to her bed? Not
only one doctor was called in, but both, and when they saw her they said
the fever had been running a long time already, and then they looked very
grave and shook their heads. She did not seem so ill. Most of their
patients had had far more aggravated symptoms yet still they shook their
heads as they looked at her, and murmured something about lake of
vitality, a general giving way, a complete want of will power, etc.
People looked at each other aghast. Was it possible that little Phebe
Lane was really going to die? Nobody really believed it could be,
excepting only Soeur Angelique. "Oh, my darling, my darling!" she cried
out when she first heard of it, and then she instantly went over and
installed herself in Phebe's room. And there she sat the slow days
through, waiting and waiting with a breaking heart. Phebe suffered very
little. She lay generally perfectly still, too weak to move, too weak to
care to speak. People came and went noiselessly below, but no one was
admitted to her room save her step-mother and Mrs. Whittridge. Mrs. Lane
watched her with growing anxiety. The fever was so slight, why did she
not rally from it? How was it credible she could fail so rapidly and so
causelessly? And Mrs. Whittridge sat by with despair in her heart.

One day, late in the afternoon, as she sat so watching, Phebe suddenly
opened her eyes. "Will you call him, please? I hear him."

"Who? Denham?" asked Soeur Angelique, with quick intuition. A finer
ear than hers had caught the light step and low voice in the narrow
hall below.

"Yes, Denham," said Phebe, softly. "Denham. I want to see him."

It pleased her to say his name so. She said it to herself over and over
beneath her breath, while waiting for him to come. It was but a moment,
and he was kneeling by the bedside, holding both her hands in his. She
looked up in his face and smiled, and said his name again, lower still.

"Denham."

"Yes, Phebe--yes, dear," he answered, too moved to say more.

"I only wanted to say good-by," she continued, her eyes full of a love
unutterable that not even the shadow of coming death could wholly darken.
"Will you kiss me good-by please, this once, good-by--for always?"

A faint, soft flush crept up over her white face, and he