he gave the most minute recommendations and
directions, with a reverent gentleness which seemed to make the true
state of the case more ghastly plain to the wife than ever, Edmondson
went off to Flaxman.

Flaxman heard his news with horror.

'A _bad_ case, you say--advanced?'

'A bad case!' Edmondson repeated gloomily. 'He has been fighting against
it too long under that absurd delusion of clergyman's throat. If only
men would not insist upon being their own doctors! And, of course, that
going down to Murewell the other day was madness. I shall go with him
to Algiers, and probably stay a week or two. To think of that life, that
career, cut short! This is a queer sort of world!'

When Flaxman went over to Bedford Square in the afternoon, he went like
a man going himself to execution. In the hall he met Catherine.

'You have seen Dr. Edmondson?' she asked, pale and still, except for a
little nervous quivering of the lip.

He stooped and kissed her hand.

'Yes. He says he goes with you to Algiers. I will come after if you will
have me. The climate may do wonders.'

She looked at him with the most heart-rending of smiles.

'Will you go in to Robert? He is in the study.'

He went, in trepidation, and found Robert lying tucked up on the sofa,
apparently reading.

'Don't--don't old fellow,' he said affectionately, as Flaxman almost
broke down. 'It comes to all of us sooner or later. Whenever it comes
we think it too soon. I believe I have been sure of it for some time.
We are such strange creatures! It has been so present to me lately that
life was too good to last. You remember the sort of feeling one used to
have as a child about some treat in the distance--that it was too much
joy--that something was sure to come between you and it? Well, in a
sense, I have had my joy the first fruits of it at least.'

But as he threw his arms behind his head, leaning back on them, Flaxman
saw the eyes darken and the naive boyish mouth contract, and knew that
under all these brave words there was a heart which hungered.

'How strange!' Robert went on reflectively; 'yesterday I was travelling,
walking like other men, a member of society. To-day I am an invalid; in
the true sense, a man no longer. The world has done with me; a barrier.
I shall never recross has sprung up between me and it.--Flaxman,
to-night is the story-telling. Will you read to them? I have the book
here prepared--some scenes from David Copperfield. And you