At that moment the "cook-general" entered with a telegram. Resignedly Miriam opened it. "I am here ill. Will you come to me? GERALD. Griffin Hotel," she read. The place of despatch was Dover. She handed it to the Major. "Will you come with me?" she asked. "You really mean to go?" "What would you have me do? He is my husband. He is very ill--dying, if my instinct tells me truth." He walked over towards her writing bureau and picked up a railway guide. "Perhaps you are right," he said. "There is a train at twelve-fifteen. We have time to catch it if you get ready at once." Without a word she left the room. She guessed how it was. Gerald had taken the journey when he was not in a fit state to travel, and on arrival at Dover had been obliged to take to bed. This was exactly what had happened. Even in the comparatively short space of time which had elapsed since he had left her, the life he had lead had been more than enough to set up the disease to which he had always been predisposed. In the face of all his doctor's orders he had insisted upon coming to England as soon as ever he had regained sufficient strength to enable him to get about. And the result was as they had predicted. He had caught a severe chill which, on arrival at Dover, had forced him to succumb. Within forty-eight hours he was in the throes of an attack of double pneumonia. When she saw him first she hardly recognised him. All the youth seemed to have gone from him. Around the mouth, where had always lurked the sunniest of smiles, were now nothing but the heaviest of lines. His cheeks were sunken and his hands like claws. The hectic flush of fever was on his face. He reached out to greet her as she entered the room, and a faint expression of pleasure parted his parched lips. "Miriam--forgive!" She laid her cool hand on his brow. "I am here, dear, to show that I forgive." "Till the end?" His eyes sought hers imploringly. "Till you are quite well," she said. "Till the end," he repeated sadly. His eyes closed and he dozed off again, his hand clasped in hers that he might keep her by him. For ten minutes she sat thus. Then, seeing that he slept soundly, she quietly rose to go to her room. As she left she called the nurse aside. She wished to see the doctor when he came. He was expected early in the afternoon. When she saw him--he was a young man and fully sensible to the charms of a pretty woman--she had no difficulty in getting her own way; it was that she might undertake at least a portion of the nursing. And so for days and weeks she came to that melancholy bedside, and tended him with all the endless patience and unswerving devotion which were so much a part of her nature. And his attitude toward her was that of a child to mother rather than that of husband to wife. So long as she was beside him he was at rest. And from her all sense of wrong, of anger, and contempt had passed away, and had given place to a great pity in her heart.