ave me. Your encouragement would have had its reward if I had kept my
sight. But it is gone--gone for always--and I am wreckage on the
rocks...."

"Elaine, Elaine!" he cried. "You have me by your side! I ask you to let
me devote my life to you!"

The answer came gently: "I must not accept such a sacrifice. You offer
it out of pity for me. Later, you would repent of it. You have your work
to do and your life to live in the open sunshine.... Yet don't think me
ungrateful. I am deeply grateful. I shall remember what you said out of
pity for me, and treasure it amongst my dearest thoughts."

"It's not pity, Elaine, but----"

He stopped abruptly. The accusing hand of memory had touched him on the
shoulder. He had no right to make any such offer--it had come from his
heart in passionate sincerity, but it was not his to give. Olive was
still his wife. Disguise it as he would, he was still Clifford Matheson.

He must leave Elaine to think that pity alone had moulded his words. To
explain to her now the shackles of circumstance that bound him fast
would be sheer cruelty, for if she knew the whole truth, she would send
him away from her and refuse even the temporary help he could give her.

For Elaine's sake he must keep silent.

A pause of bitter reflection raised a barrier of stone between them.
When he spoke again, it was from the other side of the barrier. "At
least you will let me stay by you until you leave Hegelmann's charge?
That I claim.... And I believe he will be able to do for you much more
than you imagine. He has worked wonders before. He will do so again. He
is the foremost specialist in the world. All that money can command
shall be yours."

"Money is terribly useless," said Elaine sadly.

CHAPTER XVI

ONLY PITY!

What was Elaine to do with her life?

In those weary days of the sick-room at Nimes, and on the long railway
journey through Lyons, Besancon and Strasburg to Wiesbaden, Elaine had
turned over and over, in feverishly restless search for hope, the
possibilities that lay before her.

Her total capital was comprised in a few hundred pounds and the
furniture of the flat she shared in Paris with a girl friend--a student
at the Conservatoire. The money would see her through the expenses of Dr
Hegelmann's nursing home and for a few months afterwards--a year at the
outside. After that she must inevitably be dependent on the charity of
friends or on some charitable institution.

The thoug