id not quite follow but felt vaguely moved by. What was happening
to England came into it--and something else that was connected with
himself in some way that was his own affair. In his long talk with her
he had said some strange things--though all in his own way.

"Howsoever the tide of war turns, men and women will be needed as the
world never needed them before," was one of them. "This one small
unknown thing I want. It will be the child of my old age. I _want_ it.
Her whole being has been torn to pieces. Dr. Redcliff says that she
might have died before this if her delicate body had not been stronger
than it looks."

"She has never been ill, my lord," Dowie had answered, "--but she is ill
now."

"Save her--save _it_ for me," he broke out in a voice she had never
heard and with a face she had never seen.

That in this plainly overwrought hour he should allow himself a moment
of forgetfulness drew him touchingly near to her.

"My lord," she said, "I've watched over her since she was five. I know
the ways young things in her state need to have about them to give them
strength and help. Thank the Lord she's one of the loving ones and if we
can hold her until she--wakes up to natural feelings she'll begin to try
to live for the sake of what'll need her--and what's his as well as
hers."

Of this she thought almost religiously as she sat by the bedside and
watched.

CHAPTER XXVI

The doctor rode up the climbing moorland road the next morning and paid
a long visit to his patient. He was not portentous in manner and he did
not confine his conversation to the subject of symptoms. He however
included something of subtle cross examination in his friendly talk. The
girl's thinness, her sometimes panting breath and the hollow eyes made
larger by the black ring of her lashes startled him on first sight of
her. He found that the smallness of her appetite presented to Dowie a
grave problem.

"I'm trying to coax good milk into her by degrees. She does her best.
But she can't eat." When they were alone she said, "I shall keep her
windows open and make her rest on her sofa near them. I shall try to get
her to walk out with me if her strength will let her. We can go slowly
and she'll like the moor. If we could stop the awful crying in the
night-- It's been shaking her to pieces for weeks and weeks-- It's the
kind that there's no checking when it once begins. It's beyond her poor
bit of strength to hold it back. I saw