ly--he mustn't have any excitement."

"He's had a great deal this morning. If it lasts all day, and if--he has
any more of it to-night, will it hurt him? It's pleasant excitement, you
know."

The doctor looked keenly at her. To judge by her white face she was not
sharing in the pleasant excitement.

"Well, I can't say. Pleasure does less harm than pain, sometimes. Don't
let him have any suspense, though. Suspense will kill him."

But suspense was what he had to bear.

Katherine knew that he was living on in the hope of Audrey's coming.
Well, she would be with him by nine at the latest, as she had said.

At half-past eight Vincent began to listen for every bell. At nine he
asked to have the door set ajar, that he might hear the wheels of her
cab in the street. But though many cabs went by, none stopped.

"She's missed her train. We didn't give her much time. Look out the
next, Kathy."

Katherine looked it out. "She'll be here by eleven if she catches the
three-o'clock. It gets to Paddington at ten."

Vincent closed his eyes and waited patiently till ten. Then he became
excited again, the nervous tension increasing with every quarter of an
hour. By eleven the street was still, and Vincent strained his ears for
every sound. But no sounds were to be heard.

It was half-past eleven. A look of fear had come over his face.

Katherine could bear it no longer. She went into the next room, where
Ted was standing at the window. She laid her hands on his shoulder,
clinging to him.

"Oh Ted, Ted," she whispered, fiercely. "She'll kill him. He'll _die_ if
she doesn't come. And--she isn't coming."

Ted had never known his sister do that before. It was horrible, like
seeing a man cry. He put his arms round her (he had almost to hold her
up), and comforted her as best he could. But she put him from her
gently, and went back to her post.

"She'll come to-morrow, Vincent," she said.

"No. If she were coming, she would have wired."

But that was just what Audrey had forgotten to do. By the time she had
reached Barnstaple, she was too much taken up with her own tragic
importance to think of any small detail of the kind.

Vincent had turned over on his side. He had no more hope, and nothing
mattered now. He had done his best, but was not going to carry on a
trivial dispute with death.

But though his spirit had given up the struggle, his body still fought
on with its own blind will, a long, weary fight that seemed as if