ontinued.

"Died?" I said.

"Yes," he answered. "She was dying when I reached home at last, but I
was with her at the end. That was something, wasn't it?"

I do hate people to tell me this sort of thing. Not because I do not
feel sorry for them; on the contrary, I feel so sorry that I absolutely
fail to find words to express my sympathy. I tried, however, to show it
in other ways, by the attentions I paid him and by anticipating his
every wish.

Yet there were many things that were astonishing about his actions,
things that I wonder now I did not realise must have been impossible for
him to do for himself, and that yet were done. But he was so
surprisingly dexterous with his lips, and feet too, when he was in his
cabin that I suppose I put them down to that.

I remember waking up one night and looking out of my bunk to see him
standing on the floor. The cabin was only faintly lit by a moonbeam
which found its way through the porthole. I could not see clearly, but I
fancied that he walked to the door and opened it, and closed it behind
him. He did it all very quickly, as quickly as I could have done it. As
I say, I was very sleepy, but the sight of the door opening and shutting
like that woke me thoroughly. Sitting up I shouted at him.

He heard me and opened the door again, easily, too, much more easily
than he seemed to be able to shut it when he saw me looking at him.

"Hullo! Awake, old chap?" he said. "What is it?"

"Er--nothing," I said. "Or rather I suppose I was only half awake; but
you seemed to open that door so easily that it quite startled me."

"One does not always like to let others see the shifts to which one has
to resort," was all the answer he gave me.

But I worried over it. The thing bothered me, because he had made no
attempt to explain.

That was not the only thing I noticed.

Two or three days later we were sitting together on deck. I had offered
to read to him. I noticed that he got up out of his chair. Suddenly I
saw the chair move. It gave me a great shock, for the chair twisted
apparently of its own volition, so that when he sat down again the
sunlight was at his back and not in his eyes, as I knew it had been
previously. But I reasoned with myself and managed to satisfy myself
that he must have turned the chair round with his foot. It was just
possible that he could have done so, for it had one of those light
wicker-work seats.

We had a lovely voyage for three-quarters of the