“We must keep our heads clear!” he says, after a moment or two, in a voice that is no longer anguished or reproachful, but has regained its level of colourless quiet. “We must think it out. If we could stave off the marriage for a few weeks or months, I see a way out of the difficulty.” Her lips are apart by reason of the shortness of her breath, but she forces them together to frame the two words-- “What way?” His face, at whose unfamiliar rigidity her spirit has quailed, softens. “I would not have told you so suddenly in any other case,” he says, with all his old gentle considerateness; “but now--at the pass we have arrived--it may come to you almost as a relief.” “_What_ may come?” “Your--your sacrifice would not avail the old man for very long! He--he is not going to get well.” She stares at him, not half comprehending. “Gout does not--does not--_kill_ people!” she stammers. “No. But in his case the doctors have discovered that it is complicated by a fatal disease, which has already made great progress; so that, as I say, if we can only stave it off for a while--not a long while--things will come all right!” “_All right!_ Do you call that all _right_?” she cries it out in an agony, taking in now the full meaning of his words; while, in flood, a miserable realization of this new calamity pours over her soul. _Her men!_ who had loved her so well; upon her fond tendance of whom she had prided herself! One is not; the second is only to be rescued by the hand of death from a more quickly slaying knowledge of her false cruelty; and, as to the third, now that the mask so steadily held before his face as long as there was any need for it has dropped away,--she can see that she has killed his heart! “Is it quite certain?” she asks, as soon as her dry mouth allows a husky whisper to creep through it. “Is there no hope?” “It may be sooner, it may be later; but it must come!” He pauses a moment or two, to let her take it in; then, very gently, “So that if we can only hit upon some plausible reason for postponement----” She breaks in like a sudden hurricane. “No! _no!_ NO!! If he is going to die, he _shall_ have his little bit of happiness first! You _must_ marry me! You cannot be so inhuman as to refuse!” Then, seeing, or fancying, a start of shocked negation on his part, “I have done nothing bad enough to make it a disgrace to you, and it need be only nominal!” “And his hopes?” Like three icy drops the low words fall on the flame of her passion; and for a minute or two entirely quench it. Then it springs up again alive and alight. “He will be dead before he knows that they are not to be realized.” There is a heavy silence; while, before her mental vision, the dreadful programme she has drawn up of their future life unrolls itself. What his thoughts are she cannot tell; nor whether he will accept or reject her offer. Even when he does speak, she remains still in the dark, for he only says-- “And then?” “And then what?”