readful. A year will soon pass."

"I look to you, Eric," said her father, "to show the world that we
secularists know how to bear pain. You won't waste the year if you can
do it."

Her face lighted up.

"It was like you to think of that!" she said; "that would indeed be
worth doing."

Still, do what she would, Erica could not talk him back to cheerfulness.
He was terribly distressed at her news, and more so when he found that
she was suffering a good deal. He thought with a pang of the difference
of the reality to his expectations. No walk for them in the park that
evening, nor probably for many years to come. Yet he was ignorant of
these matters, perhaps he exaggerated the danger or the duration; he
would go across and see Brian Osmond at once.

Left once more to herself, the color died out of Erica's cheeks; she lay
there pale and still, but her face was almost rigid with resoluteness.

"I am not going to give way!" she thought to herself. "I won't shed a
single tear. Tears are wasteful luxuries, bad for body and mind. And yet
yet oh, it is hard just when I wanted to help father most! Just when
I wanted to keep him from being worried. And a whole year! How shall I
bear it, when even six hours has seemed half a life time! This is what
Thekla would call a cross, but I only call it my horrid, stupid, idiotic
old spine. Well, I must try to show them that Luke Raeburn's daughter
knows how to bear pain; I must be patient, however much I boil over in
private. Yet is it honest, I wonder, to keep a patient outside, while
inside you are all one big grumble? Rather Pharisaical outside of the
cup and platter; but it is all I shall be able to do, I'm sure. That is
where Mr. Osmond's Christianity would come in; I do believe that goes
right through his life, privatest thoughts and all. Odd, that a delusion
should have such power, and over such a man! There is Sir Michael
Cunningham, too, one of the greatest and best men in England, yet
a Christian! Great intellects and much study, and still they remain
Christians 'tis extraordinary. But a Christian would have the advantage
over me in a case like this. First of all, I suppose, they would feel
that they could serve their God as well on their backs as upright, while
all the help I shall be able to give the cause is dreadfully indirect
and problematical. Then certainly they would feel that they might be
getting ready for the next world where all wrong is, they believe, to be
set