"The doctor examined her throat before he left," she said. "Of course he had no laryngoscope with him, but he didn't need one, really. The vocal cords are all stretched--he said the specialists might help her and take away a great deal of the hoarseness, but that in his opinion she can never stand the strain of public singing again: he thinks excitement alone would paralyse the cords." "Who's to tell her?" I said quietly. You see, we'd all been stretched so taut that we couldn't use any more energy in exclamations or regrets. "I thought you might," she said, but I shook my head. "Miss Jencks--" I began, but it appeared that Miss Jencks felt unequal to it. So Harriet told her, of course, on the principle that when one has a heavy load he may as well carry a little more, I suppose. And after all it wasn't so bad; for Margarita came down to me a little later, and told me she had known it all the time! "But, of course, dear child," I said hopefully, "Doctor ---- is not a throat specialist, you know, and we can but try some of those famous fellows, a little later. Perhaps in a year or two----" "You are very good to me, Jerry," she said, "but it is no use. I know. I shall never sing again. I am sorry, because----" "Sorry?" I cried, "why, of course you are sorry! What do you mean?" "Because," she continued placidly, "it will not be so much to give Roger." "Give Roger?" I echoed stupidly, "how 'give Roger'?" "I was not going to sing any more, anyway," she said. For a moment I was dazed and then the simplicity of it all flashed over me. "Why, Margarita!" I cried--and that is all the comment I ever made. "That was what I wanted to tell him when he did not know me," she explained. "I--I was going to tell him the night--the night it happened." "And does he know it now?" "Of course. That is why he got well," she said promptly. And do you know, I'm not sure she was wrong? That life was killing him--I mean it ran across his instincts and feeling and beliefs, every way. There was no doubt she meant it. She never referred to the subject again. He wanted her to see somebody else about her throat, but she absolutely refused to leave the Island till he was out of bed--Sarah came on with the baby two weeks later--and they sat by him all day nearly, the two of them, and he hardly let go her hand. He had changed a great deal in one way--his hair was quite silvered. But it was very becoming. I didn't leave till I saw him in a dressing-gown in a long chair by the fire. Harriet went back to her hospital, and when Roger was up to it they went South for a bit before he began to work again.