l the way up.

"My dearest, you never got my telegram?" This is to Rosalind, who
has come out on the landing to meet him. But the failure of the
telegram--lost in the fog, no doubt--is a small matter. What shelves
it is the patient grief on the tired, handsome face Fenwick finds
tears on as he kisses it. Sally has the optimism all to herself now.
Her mother knows that her old friend and protector will not be here
long--that, of course, has been true some time. But there's the
suffering, present and to come.

"We needn't stop the chick hoping a little still if she likes." She
says it in a whisper. Sally is on the landing below; she hears the
whispering, and half guesses its meaning. Then she suppresses the
last gas-tap, and follows on into the front room, where the three sit
talking in undertones for perhaps an hour.

Yes, that monotonous sound is the breathing of the patient in the next
room, under the new narcotic which has none of the bad effects of
opium. The nurse is there watching him, and wondering whether it will
be a week, or twenty-four hours. She derives an impression from
something that the fog really is clearing at last, and goes to the
window to see. She is right, for at a window opposite are dimly
visible, from the candles on either side of the mirror, two white arms
that are "doing" the hair of a girl whose stays are much too tight.
She is dressing for late dinner or an early party. Then the nurse,
listening, understands that the traffic has been roused from its long
lethargy. "I thought I heard the wheels," she says to herself. Then
Sally also becomes aware of the sound in the traffic, and goes to _her_
window in the front room.

"You see I'm right," she says. "The people are letting their fires out,
and the fog's giving. Now I'm going to take you home, Jeremiah." For
the understanding is that these two shall return to Krakatoa Villa,
leaving Rosalind to watch with the nurse. She will get a chop in half
an hour's time. She can sleep on the sofa in the front room if she
feels inclined. All which is duty carried out or arranged for.

After her supper Rosalind sat on by herself before the fire in the
front room. She did not want to be unsociable with the nurse; but she
wanted to think, alone. A weight was on her mind; the thought that the
dear old friend, who had been her father and refuge, should never know
that she again possessed her recovered husband on terms almost as good
as if that deadly passa