When he had first received word of her marriage, André had cast himself on the ground, and the earth had seemed to respond with deep tremours to his grief. He had told himself that he would never see her again. As for her husband, he felt that it would be impossible for him to ever meet Simon Hart without yielding to the desire to fly straight at his throat. Yet, he had met him and experienced no emotion of the sort. Something told him that Rachel was not in love with her husband. Still there was that in her eyes which bewildered him. Now with his hands clasped behind his head and his back against a tree, he regarded her with a devotion, a tenderness, a desperation of which none but a pure and youthful soul is capable, and the old agony began to stir again in the depths of his breast. Ceasing from her ecstatic contemplation of the sky, Rachel looked over at the gardener's cottage. As she did so, all her outlines went to deeper softness. André, sensitively, felt the thrill through her of some ineffable emotion. "What are you thinking about, Rachel?" he demanded. She started and the colour mounted. "Thinking?" "Yes; just now, when you turned and looked over yonder?" "Oh! ... I was thinking of Mr. St. Ives's improvement of the organ. It's really extraordinary what he has accomplished, André; and by such simple means. You must see it. He's carrying on his work over there in the gardener's cottage. And I was comparing his invention and his natural pride in it, to the rose bush and its roses, I suppose." "St. Ives?" André was sitting upright and rigid. "Is he--is he the one who came to Pemoquod that time?" "Yes. My husband formed a company to represent his inventions. I always felt Mr. St. Ives had great promise," she went on as frankly as she could, "and I persuaded Simon to get up a company. Now he's glad he did." André was wretched. "And he's here? "Yes; for a few weeks. Mr. Hart was anxious that the work shouldn't be delayed, so he came here while the shop is being altered." André said no more. And Rachel exerted herself to dispel his gloom. So contagious was the vitality of her mood that he apparently forgot the incident. Presently, bidding him gather up the withered roses that littered the path, and taking into her own hands the bunch of fresh blossoms, she led the way to the house and André followed. His old dream, in all its simplicity, once more possessed his heart. When Rachel arrived at the hospital, John Smith was expecting her. In a clean shirt with his grey hair neatly brushed and his gaunt frame arranged under a spotless sheet, he was eagerly awaiting her. The floor nurse warned her that the interview must be a brief one; the patient could not live more than a day or two.