melt
something very beautiful.

She focussed her eyes on something that swayed drunkenly: after awhile
it stood still, and she saw that it was a little blue vase filled with
boronia. The breeze from the open window was tapping the blind softly to
and fro, and wafting the scent of the boronia over her face. Then she
saw Louis's face, very white, above her.

"All right, old girl?" he whispered.

She tried to find her hand to raise it to him, but it seemed so far
from her that she would have to go to the end of the world to fetch it.
And that was too far. So she smiled at him.

"You're all right, you see," he said nervously. "Gloomy forebodings are
so silly, aren't they?"

"I--thought I should feel it," she said.

"I told you you wouldn't, didn't I? The nurse said you took an awful
time to go under--"

"Yes. I wanted to explain something. And I wanted to help the
surgeons--I thought I'd--do it--much better than they could."

"Just like you, old lady," he said, with his eyes wet.

"Silly to fight, Louis--strong things--wise things--like those
surgeons--even if they are making awful pains for you to bear--"

"I wouldn't talk, darling," he whispered anxiously, his face against
hers.

"I'm not talking, Louis--I'm thinking," she said anxiously. "Something I
was thinking--all mixed up with old Wullie, and a pathway. It seems to
me God is like those surgeons--only--strong and wise, you know--only He
never gives you chloroform, does He?"

She lost sight of Louis's face then for a very long time.

CHAPTER XXXI

Three months later they were aboard a P. and O. steamer, calling their
good-byes to Mrs. King and half a dozen of the boys, and Mr. and Mrs.
Twist who had come all the way from Loose End to see them off.

Marcella had stayed in hospital for two months; for another month she
had been struggling with inability to begin life again in a nursing home
overlooking the thunders of the Pacific. Louis had gone back to the
Homestead. He would not explain what he was going to do. He merely
fetched Andrew, and put him in charge of Mrs. King, who brought him
every day to see her. And then he vanished. But she had no fears for
him. They had vanished; her sudden yielding to the chloroform in the
hospital had been symbolical of a deeper yielding; she felt that these
strong, wise forces of her life, if pain became unendurable, would
either cure it or find an anesthetic for it.

And one day, towards the end of the