o do when these are
through?"

"Play ring o' roses on the roof and forget it," she said, with a laugh.
"Ration those--one each hour when the church clock strikes. Then we'll
go to bed and go to sleep and make to-morrow come quicker."

"You know I never sleep if I haven't a smoke," he said impatiently "I
wish it wasn't Sunday. I'd go out and get drunk."

She made tea, which he swallowed in huge gulps. He refused food, but she
ate large, thick slices of bread and jam with relish. The heat of the
day came down like an impalpable curtain, making her tired and gasping.
Twice she stood under the cold douche in the bathroom, but the exertion
of dressing made her blaze again. In the afternoon they both tried to
read, but he was too restless to be held by a book and she found
"L'Assommoir" which Dr. Angus had sent out among a collection in answer
to her request for "every book about drink," depressing. It told her
nothing; all these books seemed to her to hold a policy of despair that
indicated lunacy or suicide as Louis's only possible end. E.F. Benson's
"House of Defence" was the most hopeful book she read. In the tormented
morphia-maniac she saw Louis vividly. But she knew that he was too
innately untrustful, unloving, to be saved by an act of faith. She had
put that book down an hour ago, and turned again to the real pessimism
of Zola, longing for the cool of the evening to come.

"Marcella," said Louis at last. "There's only one now."

She put the book down impatiently and, going across to him, sat on the
cool, draughty floor, taking one of his limp, damp hands in hers.

"You know, little boy, if you really were a little boy, I could smack
you and put you to bed for being such a worry. Didn't your mother ever
stop you worrying for things when you were a kiddy? If I ever wanted
things father made me go without them on principle."

"Yet he killed himself with drink."

"Yes. I guess he didn't mean me to kill myself with any desire at all!
Fancy being tyrannized over by a bit of paper and tobacco! Can't you get
a picture of it? A nice, big man like you and a cigarette standing there
with a grin on its face, like a savage god, making you bow down and
worship it! Horrible! Didn't the Lord know all about you when he made
that commandment about graven images!"

"Oh, you're inhuman--and you're a prig! You're a block of marble. You
think because you've never wanted anything in your life no one else
has."

"I like marble,"