t subdued by disease.
"I shan't live long enough," she said, "to incur that danger. What I
have thought ever since I could study, I think now, and shall to the
last moment." I buried her without forms of any kind, in the cemetery
at Kingsmill. That was what she wished. I should have despised myself
if I had lacked that courage.'

'It was right,' muttered Godwin.

'And I wear no mourning, you see. All that kind of thing is ignoble. I
am robbed of a priceless companionship, but I don't care to go about
inviting people's pity. If only I could forget those months of
suffering! Some day I shall, perhaps, and think of her only as she
lived.'

'Were you alone with her all the time?'

'No. Our cousin Janet was often with us.' Christian spoke with averted
face. 'You don't know, of course, that she has gone in for medical
work--practises at Kingsmill. The accident was at a village called
Lowton, ten miles or more from Kingsmill. Janet came over very often.'

Godwin mused on this development of the girl whom he remembered so
well. He could not direct his thoughts; a languor had crept over him.

'Do you recollect, Peak,' said Christian, presently, 'the talk we had
in the fields by Twybridge, when we first met?'

The old friendliness was reappearing in his manner, He was yielding to
the impulse to be communicative, confidential, which had always
characterised him.

'I remember,' Godwin murmured.

'If only my words then had had any weight with you! And if only I had
acted upon my own advice! Just for those few weeks I was sane; I
understood something of life; I saw my true way before me. You and I
have both gone after ruinous ideals, instead of taking the solid good
held out to us. Of course, I know your story in outline. I don't ask
you to talk about it. You are independent now, and I hope you can use
your freedom.--Well, and I too am free.'

The last words were in a lower tone. Godwin glanced at the speaker,
whose sadness was not banished, but illumined with a ray of calm hope.

'Have you ever thought of me and my infatuation?' Christian asked.

'Yes.'

'I have outlived that mawkish folly. I used to drink too much; the two
things went well together. It would shame me to tell you all about it.
But, happily, I have been able to go back about thirteen years--recover
my old sane self--and with it what I then threw away.'

'I understand.'

'Do you? Marcella knew of it, just before her death, and it made her
glad. But