," she began, her eyes looking not at me but straight
ahead, "that I've been happy--these five years--though perhaps not how
happy. But in spite of it all--there is always that something--that
_fear_ here--clutching at me--that it may not all be real--that it can't
last."

Again she looked at me and turned away, but not before I had caught a
flash of terror in her eyes.

"Even with them all against me, Tom, I've stuck to it--to what I feel is
my right. This is my home--and it's Jim's home--and the children's as
well as it's mine--and, in a way, it's--inviolate. I've sworn that
nothing ugly shall come into it--nothing shall ruin it--the way our
lives were ruined out there!"

Her voice trembled, but her eyes, as she turned to me at the last, were
steady.

"I'll send something, of course," she said; "you will take it to them.
But I'll--not go."

With her message and her money I sought out Lin Darton and Miss Etta,
and together we rambled in their open Ford along those flat, dead
Illinois roads that I had not seen for so long.

It is a doctor's profession to save life, and there was a life to be
saved, if it were possible. But he was nearer to the end than I had
thought. Grega was there in that same barren room of the mill-house,
doing things in a stolid, undeft sort of way. The bed had been pulled
near the stove and the room was stuffier, more untidy than in the days
when Lisbeth had been there. The creaky bed, the unvarnished walls, and
the rusty alarm clock, that ticked insistently, all added to the sense
of flaccidity. The afternoon was late and already dark; sagging clouds
had gathered, shutting out what was left of the daylight. Miss Etta lit
a smudgy lamp, sniffling as she did so.

From under the torn quilt the man stared back at me, with much of his
old penetration, despite the fever that racked him.

"I--want--Lisbeth," were his first words to me.

I shook my head. "She cannot come just now," I told him, hand on his
wrist. "But we are here to do everything for you."

"Tel-e-phone her," he said with his old emphasis on each syllable, "and
tell--her that I'm--dy-ing. Don't answer me. You know that--_I--am
dy-ing and I--want--her_."

Miss Etta, the tears streaming over her large face, went to do his
bidding. I could hear her lumbersome footsteps going down the crazy
outside stairway. He gave me a triumphant look as I lifted his arm, then
abruptly he drew away from me. He had an ingrained fear of drugs of