s to the woman I loved. At last we reached Christ Church. The
Dodans lived in the suburbs in a pretty villa on a high hill, from whose
top the city lay spread before them in its modest extent with its
neighboring places and Port Lyttelon eight miles away.

I found my father better, but it required my own zeal and affection to
thoroughly restore him, and bring him back to his characteristic
interest and alertness, which made him so original and delightful a
companion. At length, by a week's nursing, during which Miss Dodan and
myself were frequently together, becoming more and more attached to each
other, my father renewed his wonted studies, and strongly desired to
return to the "plateau."

I almost regretted, harsh as the thought may seem, our return. Such
incidents are now a kind of sweet sadness to recall, for as I write
these words, I hear nearer and nearer the summons that must put me also
in the spirit world, while she, in whose heart my own trustingly lived,
has been taken away, I think wisely and prudently, to live with her
father's people in a charming, rustic village of Devonshire. But oh! so
far away! and this picture which daily I draw from beneath the pillow of
my sick couch must alone serve to replace the companionship of her face
and voice.

I can permit myself in this last record of an unrecoverable past to
describe a treasured incident just before I left the Dodan home with my
father. I was coming out of my room when I found Miss Dodan also
emerging from her own bedroom at the opposite end of an upper hall. We
met and I said: "Miss Dodan, it is a treacherous confession, but I wish
you were going back with us, or that my father would stay a little
longer here. I shall miss you."

"Yes," she answered. "Aren't you a good nurse?"

"Oh, I think you need not misunderstand me," I insisted.

"Misunderstanding is rather an English trait, you Americans say," she
retorted.

"But in this case," I continued, "I hoped any disadvantages of that sort
would be overcome by your own feelings."

She blushed and looked quite dauntlessly into my eyes: "You mean," she
inquired, "that you are sorry to leave me?"

My face was very red, I knew, and I felt a puzzling sensation in my
throat, but I did not hesitate: "Of course, I am sorry to leave you,
more sorry than I can say, but I fear more, that leaving you may mean
losing you."

This time confusion seemed struggling with a pleased mirth in her face,
and with a la