sabel
had received from her lover since they had parted at Coalchester
station eighteen months ago.

She knew nothing of Theophil's wild visit to her room, for the housemaid
had forgotten to mention his call; and the strange and perhaps somewhat
cruel silence could, of course, only mean one thing for her,--that Jenny
had divined their love, and that for Jenny's happiness Theophil had
determined that they must never see each other again.

Yet, even so, it could not have wronged Jenny for him to have sent so
much in written words! Had he ceased loving her?... No, that she could
never believe. They had _met_ too really for that. And, after all, this
silence was no more than their sad marriage-bond. Sad, truly, and a
little tired these months had made Isabel, but they had had no power
over her love. That belonged to the realities; that could never change.

"Jenny is dead, and I am dying," Isabel kept saying over to herself,
divining, with love's intuition, something of Jenny's tragedy, and
something of Theophil's conflict during those silent months.

"Jenny is dead, and I am dying,"--a sad, a tragic message, surely! And
yet, as from the first shock and consequent turmoil of that message, its
real significance slowly evolved, even Isabel was perhaps surprised to
find it rather a happy than an unhappy significance. Jenny was dead, and
Theophil was dying; and yet, when at last she shook herself out of her
reverie, her face was curiously lit with peace.

She presently discovered that there was a train north in two hours; and
then she turned to her desk, and with that business-like carefulness
with which we often act in a dream, she went over its contents, and
methodically transferred its various accumulations to the tiny grate,
which was soon blazing with unwonted summer fire. A little handful of
letters she saved, and from the diminutive locked cupboard in the
centre she took out a small sealed packet, which was to be included
among her luggage.

All trains do not separate. There are also glad trains which bring
together; and soon Isabel was in one of these, and soon it had taken her
to Theophil,--to whose ears at last had come the sound of wonderful
wheels in the dead street, wheels that had stopped beneath his window, a
rustle of alighting, an opening and shutting of doors, an approaching
whisper on the staircase, and then, with reality unutterable--Isabel.

Isabel!

You could hardly have told that Theophil was dyin