For,
from the moment she started, Jane never doubted her ultimate
destination,--the room where pain and darkness and despair must be
waging so terrible a conflict against the moral courage, the mental
sanity, and the instinctive hold on life of the man she loved.

That she was going to him, Jane knew; but she felt utterly unable to
arrange how or in what way her going could be managed. That it was a
complicated problem, her common sense told her; though her yearning
arms and aching bosom cried out: "O God, is it not simple? Blind and
alone! MY Garth!"

But she knew an unbiased judgment, steadier than her own, must solve
the problem; and that her surest way to Garth lay through the doctor's
consulting-room. So she telegraphed to Deryck from Paris, and at
present her mind saw no further than Wimpole Street.

At Dover she bought a paper, and hastily scanned its pages as she
walked along the platform in the wake of the capable porter who had
taken possession of her rugs and hand baggage. In the personal column
she found the very paragraph she sought.

"We regret to announce that Mr. Garth Dalmain still lies in a most
precarious condition at his house on Deeside, Aberdeenshire, as a
result of the shooting accident a fortnight ago. His sight is
hopelessly gone, but the injured parts were progressing favourably, and
all fear of brain complications seemed over. During the last few days,
however, a serious reaction from shock has set in, and it has been
considered necessary to summon Sir Deryck Brand, the well-known nerve
specialist, in consultation with the oculist and the local practitioner
in charge of the case. There is a feeling of wide-spread regret and
sympathy in those social and artistic circles where Mr. Dalmain was so
well-known and so deservedly popular."

"Oh, thank you, m'lady," said the efficient porter when he had
ascertained, by a rapid glance into his palm, that Jane's half-crown
was not a penny. He had a sick young wife at home, who had been ordered
extra nourishment, and just as the rush on board began, he had put up a
simple prayer to the Heavenly Father "who knoweth that ye have need of
these things," asking that he might catch the eye of a generous
traveller. He felt he had indeed been "led" to this plain, brown-faced,
broad-shouldered lady, when he remembered how nearly, after her curt
nod from a distance had engaged him, he had responded to the
blandishments of a fussy little woman, with many more