e should go home on Friday.

Dr. Sharpe dropped his cup; Harrie wiped up the tea.

"My dear Miss Dallas--surely--we cannot let you go yet! Harrie! Can't
you keep your friend?"

Harrie said the proper thing in a low tone. Pauline repeated her
determination with much decision, and was afraid that her visit had been
more of a burden than Harrie, with all her care, was able to bear. Dr.
Sharpe pushed back his chair noisily, and left the room.

He went and stood by the parlor window. The man's face was white. What
business had the days to close down before him like a granite wall,
because a woman with long trains and white hands was going out of them?
Harrie's patient voice came in through the open door:--

"Yes, yes, yes, Rocko; mother is tired to-day; wait a minute."

Pauline, sweeping by the piano, brushed the keys a little, and sang:--

"Drifting, drifting on and on,
Mast and oar and rudder gone,
Fatal danger for each one,
We helpless as in dreams."

What had he been about?

The air grew sweet with the sudden scent of heliotrope, and Miss Dallas
pushed aside the curtain gently.

"I may have that sail across the bay before I go? It promises to be fair
to-morrow."

He hesitated.

"I suppose it will be our last," said the lady, softly.

She was rather sorry when she had spoken, for she really did not mean
anything, and was surprised at the sound of her own voice.

But they took the sail.

Harrie watched them off--her husband did not invite her to go on that
occasion--with that stealthy sharpness in her eyes. Her lips and hands
and forehead were burning. She had been cold all day. A sound like the
tolling of a bell beat in her ears. The children's voices were choked
and distant. She wondered if Biddy were drunk, she seemed to dance about
so at her ironing-table, and wondered if she must dismiss her, and who
could supply her place. She tried to put my room in order, for she was
expecting me that night by the last train, but gave up the undertaking
in weariness and confusion.

In fact, if Harrie had been one of the Doctor's patients, he would have
sent her to bed and prescribed for brain-fever. As she was not a
patient, but only his wife, he had not found out that anything ailed
her.

Nothing happened while he was gone, except that a friend of Biddy's
"dropped in," and Mrs. Sharpe, burning and shivering in her
sewing-chair, dreamily caught through the open door, and dreamily
repeated to herself,