e think about it to-morrow, please," she
said.

They went back to Mrs. King's almost in silence. Both of them seemed as
creatures walking in a dream. With one accord they looked at each other
when they got back in the room. Mrs. King, anxious-eyed, was talking to
someone in the kitchen. To avoid having to talk to her they went up on
the roof. The city rumbled beneath their feet, very, very much alive.
Everything seemed to be blatantly alive, flaunting its bounding life at
them. They sat down on the coping.

Without warning she clung to him and began to cry.

"Louis--please don't let me be chopped up," she sobbed. He held her as
though he would snatch her out of life and pain and danger. But he did
not know what to say.

"Louis, I hate my body to push itself into notice like this," she cried
after awhile. "I always did--as a child, and when Andrew was coming, I
hated you to see me--like that--Oh and Louis, I can't die--yet--"

"My darling, you're cracking me up!" he cried. "But don't think of
dying. Surgeons don't let people die nowadays! You can't die. You're too
much alive. You'd fight any illness--"

They sat trying to think some alleviation into their misery. Presently
she snatched herself away from him.

"It's such a beastly, slinking sort of way to die! In a bed--sick and
ill! Why can't they have wars--so that I could die quick on a
battlefield? You wouldn't have time to be getting cold beforehand, then.
Louis, it's like father, lying in bed till his poor heart was drowned.
Louis--Oh--"

She stopped, breathless. Her eyes narrowed; she was thinking deep down.

"I wonder if it's--necessary?"

He shook himself impatiently.

"How can pain and illness ever be necessary?"

"They may be--perhaps not to the sufferer, you know," she said, and
would not explain what she meant. She was seeing pictures of herself
praying for weakness--and of burning Feet--

"I wish Andrew had come with us. Is there time to send for him?" she
said presently.

"Every day is important now," he said, choked.

"Yes. I've not to be sentimental," she said, and tried not to grieve him
as she remembered very vividly her own sick misery when her father and
mother were ill and there was nothing she could do.

But even as she tried to be brave little fears would crop up, little
jets of horror burst out and wring words from her lips.

"Louis, it's the beastliness of it, you know," she cried. "Imagine
something taking possession of you