"Nerves, hysteria--any other silly
womanish thing a cripple could have. Let me alone, Phyllis. I wish you
could put me out of the way altogether!"

Phyllis made herself laugh, though her heart hurried with fright. She
had seen Allan suffer badly before--be apathetic, irritable, despondent,
but never in a state where he did not cling to her.

"I can't let you alone," she said brightly. "I've come to stay with you
till you feel quieter.... Would you rather I talked to you, or kept
quiet?"

"Oh, do your wifely duty, whatever it is," he said.... "It was a
mistake, the whole thing. You've done more than your duty, child,
but--oh, you'd better go away."

Phyllis's heart turned over. Was it as bad as this? Was he as sick of
her as this?

"You mean--you think," she faltered, "it was a mistake--our marriage?"

"Yes," he said restlessly. "Yes.... It wasn't fair."

She had no means of knowing that he meant it was unfair to her. She held
on to herself, though she felt her face turning cold with the sudden
pallor of fright.

"I think it can be annulled," she said steadily. "No, I suppose it
wasn't fair."

She stopped to get her breath and catch at the only things that
mattered--steadiness, quietness, ability to soothe Allan!

"It can be annulled," she said again evenly. "But listen to me now,
Allan. It will take quite a while. It can't be done to-night, or before
you are stronger. So for your own sake you must try to rest now.
Everything shall come right. I promise you it shall be annulled. But
forget it now, please. I am going to hold your wrists and talk to you,
recite things for you, till you go back to sleep."

She wondered afterwards how she could have spoken with that hard
serenity, how she could have gone steadily on with story after story,
poem after poem, till Allan's grip on her hands relaxed, and he fell
into a heavy, tired sleep.

[Illustration: "BUT YOU SEE--HE'S--ALL I HAVE ... GOOD-NIGHT, WALLIS"]

She sat on the side of the bed and looked at him, lying still against
his white pillows. She looked and looked, and presently the tears began
to slide silently down her cheeks. She did not lift her hands to wipe
them away. She sat and cried silently, openly, like a desolate, unkindly
treated child.

"Mrs. Allan! Mrs. Allan, ma'am!" came Wallis's concerned whisper from
the doorway. "Don't take it as hard as that. It's just a little relapse.
He was overtired. I shouldn't have called you, but you always quiet