lect how very
odd all this was. She certainly must be very much attached to this
Christian friend of hers.

Then she stood up, and he rose with her.

"Thank you so much, Mr. Francis.... Then that is the kind of outline?"

"Well, yes; so far as one can put it in a few words."

"Thank you.... I mustn't keep you."

He went with her towards the door. But within a yard of it she stopped.

"And you, Mr. Francis. You were brought up in all this. Does it ever
come back to you?"

He smiled.

"Never," he said, "except as a dream."

"How do you account for that, then? If it is all self-suggestion, you
have had thirty years of it."

She paused; and for a moment he hesitated what to answer.

"How would your old fellow-Catholics account for it?"

"They would say that I bad forfeited light--that Faith was withdrawn."

"And you?"

Again he paused.

"I should say that I had made a stronger self-suggestion the other way."

"I see.... Good-night, Mr. Francis."

* * * * *

She would not let him come down the lift with her, so when he had seen
the smooth box drop noiselessly below the level, he went back again to
his model of the Abbey and the little dummy figures. But, before he
began to move these about again, he sat for a moment or two with pursed
lips, staring.

CHAPTER IV

I

A week later Mabel awoke about dawn; and for a moment or two forgot
where she was. She even spoke Oliver's name aloud, staring round the
unfamiliar room, wondering what she did here. Then she remembered, and
was silent....

It was the eighth day she had spent in this Home; her probation was
finished: to-day she wits at liberty to do that for which she had come.
On the Saturday of the previous week she had gone through her private
examination before the magistrate, stating under the usual conditions of
secrecy her name, age and home, as well as her reasons for making the
application for Euthanasia; and all had passed off well. She had
selected Manchester as being sufficiently remote and sufficiently large
to secure her freedom from Oliver's molestation; and her secret had been
admirably kept. There was not a hint that her husband knew anything of
her intentions; for, after all, in these cases the police were bound to
assist the fugitive. Individualism was at least so far recognised as to
secure to those weary of life the right of relinquishing it. She
scarcely knew why she had selected this method, except that any other
seemed i