“Darling!” she gasped as her hands clasped his coat, “tell me--tell me what _is_ the matter? Why do you look like that? What awful thing has happened?” He did not answer. She repeated the question with a tenser anxiety. “What _is_ the matter? Do tell me!” It was impossible for him to do so. In the urgency of the moment he did what he could to keep back the truth. But at the best, it was a lame, clumsy, half-hearted effort. “You think you may have caught a slight chill motoring into the country yesterday?” An explanation so feeble could but add fuel to Helen’s incredulity. Something far beyond that poor excuse was called for by those wild eyes and ashen cheeks. “Not that I’m really ill,” he managed to say. But the voice was not his. Hollow, spectral, thin, it might have been a ghost’s. She knew that he was ill indeed. Eyes of despair, now palpably shrinking from contact with hers, told her too clearly that he was suffering from a grave malady. Moreover she knew he was trying his utmost to conceal the fact from her. Suddenly her eye lit on a sheet of foolscap lying on the carpet. In the agitation of the moment it had drifted, no doubt, from his writing table. It was covered with recent writing which had been left to dry. As Helen picked up this document, she glanced at it, almost without a thought of what she did. A swift intuition told her that this was no ordinary paper. He had been making his will! “Why not?” He tried for a light and whimsical inflection, with which to turn aside that startled accusation. The failure to achieve it was complete. In fact, it was so complete that in the ear of Helen it sounded rather ghastly. “Something awful has happened,” she said. “I feel sure of it.” The alarm in her eyes, her note of fierce conviction, was becoming too much for him. Even if he owed it to her to carry the thing off bravely, in a fashion that would spare her infinite pain, he soon began to realize that in his present shattered state such a task was beyond him. For the time being, she was stronger than he. Face to face with death he had made up his mind to accept it with stoicism, but the importunity of the woman he adored overcame him now. At first, he had been fully determined to tell her nothing. The concealed rock which had shattered a fine career should remain undisclosed. But he saw that it would be inhuman to meet death in silence and in secrecy, even had such a course been feasible. How much should he tell? That was his problem. She was his wife, and had a right to know all. He had made, it was true, certain solemn vows. But these, as he now saw, had been entered upon in an evil hour. Therefore, he must break these vows and pay for the privilege with his life. But the question remained, how much would it be expedient to tell her?