The doctor looked thoughtfully at his patient. He knew that illness of a certain type atrophies the memory and the affections, while leaving unaffected the mind and a certain fierce instinct of self-preservation. Dr. Mallet was not so much shocked or so much surprised by Richard Maule's remark as a layman would have been. Again the bereaved husband spoke, and this time questioningly. "A peaceful death, Mallet? A happy death?" "Yes--yes, certainly." Something impelled him to add, "But a terrible thing when it comes to one so young, so beautiful, as was your wife!" He compared the stillness, the equanimity, of the man lying before him, with the awful agitation of Dick Wantele--an agitation so terrible, a horror so overwhelming, that it had confirmed Dr. Mallet in a theory of his, a theory formed a good many years ago, and of which he had sometimes felt ashamed. But the mind of an intelligent medical man who has enjoyed for many years a large family practice becomes like one of those old manuals for the use of confessors. His mind perforce becomes a store-house of strange sins, of troubled, abnormal happenings, which belong, from the point of view of the happy and the sane, to a fifth dimension, unimagined, unimaginable. The wise physician, like the wise confessor, does not allow his mind to dwell on these things, but he does not make the mistake of telling himself--as so many of us do--that they are not there. The doctor had formed a suspicion, which had now become a certainty. Yet he was surprised by Richard Maule's next words. "It must have been an awful shock to Dick, Mallet. He was thrown so much more with Athena than I could be of late years, though to be sure she was a great deal away." He waited a moment, and as the doctor made no comment, "Although they didn't pull it off well together, still for my sake they both kept up a kind of armed truce, eh, Mallet?" He looked searchingly at the other man. "I am telling you nothing you do not know." The other nodded gravely. "Where's Dick now?" Mr. Maule asked abruptly; and the doctor saw that the thin hand holding the coverlet shook a little. "I sent him off to get Ricketts. I thought it better to give him something to do; for as you say, as you have guessed, he was very much over-wrought and upset. Of course Ricketts can do nothing, but I thought he had better be sent for. And to tell you the truth, I wanted to give Dick a job." "Has anyone told General Lingard, Mallet?" "No. He went out for a walk before breakfast--an odd thing to do, but it seems he generally does go out every morning. They're expecting him in in a few minutes. Would you like me to tell him?" "I should be grateful if you would. And after you've told him, Mallet, I should like to see him--just for a few moments. My poor wife was very fond of him. You know he's engaged to Jane Oglander?" "Yes. Dick told me. But I understood it was a secret?" "Yes--yes, so it is." * * * * *