ou're
right, really," she said slowly.

That was the day before he went south to Edinburgh to join the hospital.
His mother wanted him in London, and his father wrote saying that his
old room was ready for him. But Louis told them that Marcella must be at
Lashnagar, and Edinburgh was nearer Lashnagar than London was. Dr. Angus
felt personally responsible for the resources of Edinburgh when he heard
the news and once again he made a pilgrimage, taking Louis to his old
rooms in Montague Street, and doing the honours of the city with a
proprietorial air. He took to running down to Edinburgh quite
frequently; he said he was brushing up his knowledge.

The winter passed; Louis spent Christmas at Lashnagar and then took
Marcella and the boy to London. Marcella was feeling very ill, but he
was too happy and too full of his work to notice it. She was very glad
to get back again, to sleep in her father's old four-poster bed looking
out on Ben Grief. When he had gone back to Edinburgh she spent many
wakeful nights, drawn in upon herself, thinking herself to nothingness
like a Buddhist monk until pain brought her to realization again. In
those hours she thought much of her father and heard his voice in her
ears, saw him standing there before her, clinging to the post as he
prayed for strength. Louis wrote her immense letters: sometimes in the
night she would light her candle and read them with tears blinding her
eyes and an unspeaking gratitude in her heart. She said nothing to Aunt
Janet about her illness in Sydney, or about her pain, but one evening
the old lady, looking across the firelit hearth, said quietly:

"I shall outlive you, Marcella. Seems foolish! You--young, all tingling
for life and joy, and people to care about you. I like a last year's
leaf before the wind, dried and dead. The one shall be taken and the
other left. It seems foolish."

"How did you know? Did Louis tell you?" asked Marcella in a low voice.
The pain had been unbearable all day but she had wrapt herself in a
great cape of her father's and taken it out on Lashnagar, where no one
could see her, leaving Andrew at the hut with Wullie. For a long time
she had lost consciousness, to waken very cold in the winter dusk.

"No, Louis said nothing. But I've eyes. You're marked for death. I saw
it when you came in at the door that night. Besides, you and I are very
much alike, so I understand you. And you're getting very much like your
mother."

"I think I