At last she could endure it no longer. She had come to a point of indifference. "Leave me and let me die." This was all she said when Roland was at length forced to believe that her sickness was not temper, or disappointment, or jealousy. The company were compelled to leave her; Roland saw his favourites on the train and then he returned to nurse his sick wife. He found her insensible, and she remained so for many days. Doctors were called, and Roland conscientiously remained by her side; but yet it was all alone that she fought her battle with death. No one went with her into the dark valley of his shadow. She was deaf to all human voices; far beyond all human help or comfort. Through the long nights Roland heard her moaning and muttering, but it was the voice of one at an inconceivable distance--of one at the very shoal of being. She came back from the strife weak as a baby. Her clear, shrill voice was a whisper. She could not lift a finger. It was an exhausting effort to open her eyes. A new-born child was in every respect more alive and more self-helpful, for Denasia could not by look or whisper make a complaint or a request. She was only not dead. The convalescence from such a sickness was necessarily long and tiresome. The fondest heart, the most unselfish nature must at times have felt the strain too great to be borne. Roland changed completely under it. His love for Denasia had always been dependent upon accessories pleasant and profitable to himself, as, indeed, his love for any human being would have been. While Denasia's beauty and talent gave him _eclat_ and brought him money, he admired Denasia; and while her personality made sweet his private and enviable his public hours, he loved her. But a wife smitten by deathly sickness into breathing clay--a wife who could give him no delight and make him no money--a wife who compelled him to waste his days in darkness and solitude and unpleasant duties and his money in medicines and doctor's fees--was not the kind of wife he had given his heart and name to. It was evident to him that Denasia had failed. "She has failed in everything I hoped from her," he said to himself bitterly one day, as he sat beside the still, death-like figure; "and there must be an end of this some way, Roland Tresham."