he old lawyer's
precise and unemotional story. The boy-lover, pinioned, helpless,
condemned to watch his sweetheart dying by inches, and unable to help
her by so much as lifting a hand--could anything be more awful not only
to endure, but to remember?

"And yet," she thought whimsically, "it mightn't be so bad to have one
_real_ tragedy to remember, if you haven't anything else! All _I'll_
have to remember when I'm old will be bad little children and good
little children, and books and boarding-houses, and the recollection
that people said I was a very worthy young woman once!" But she threw
off the thought. It's just as well not to think of old age when all the
idea brings up is a vision of a nice, clean Old Ladies' Home.

"But you said he was an invalid?" she said aloud.

"Yes, I regret to say," answered Mr. De Guenther. "You see, it was found
that the shock to the nerves, acting on an already over-keyed mind and
body, together with some spinal blow concerning which the doctors are
still in doubt, had affected Allan's powers of locomotion." (Mr. De
Guenther certainly did like long words!) "He has been unable to walk
since. And, which is sadder, his state of mind and body has become
steadily worse. He can scarcely move at all now, and his mental attitude
can only be described as painfully morbid--yes, I may say _very_
painfully morbid. Sometimes he does not speak at all for days together,
even to his mother, or his attendant."

"Oh, poor boy!" said Phyllis. "How long has he been this way?"

"Seven years this fall," the answer came consideringly. "Is it not,
love?"

"Yes," said his wife, "seven years."

"_Oh!_" said the Liberry Teacher, with a quick catch of sympathy at her
heart.

Just as long as she had been working for her living in the big, dusty
library. Supposing--oh, supposing she'd had to live all that time in
such suffering as this poor Allan had endured and his mother had had to
witness! She felt suddenly as if the grimy, restless Children's Room,
with its clatter of turbulent little outland voices, were a safe, sunny
paradise in comparison.

Mr. De Guenther did not speak. He visibly braced himself and was visibly
ill-at-ease.

"I have told most of the story, Isabel, love," said he at last. "Would
you not prefer to tell the rest? It is at your instance that I have
undertaken this commission for Mrs. Harrington, you will remember."

It struck Phyllis that he didn't think it was quite a dignified