She rose, supporting herself with one trembling hand; even in the firelight her face was deathly pale. 'Take me to him first,' she said, and the voice was that of a different woman, 'after that I will speak to you.' 'To Vincent?' he asked, half stupefied by what he was suffering. 'Not to-night, Mabel, you must not!' 'I must,' she replied; 'if you will not take me I shall go alone--quick, let us lose no time!' He went out into the main road and hailed a cab, as he had done often enough before for one of their journeys to dinner or the theatre; when he returned Mabel was already standing cloaked and hooded at the open door. 'Tell him to drive fast--fast,' she said feverishly, as he helped her into the hansom, and she did not open her lips again till it stopped. He glanced at her face now and then, when the shop-lights revealed her profile as she lay back in her corner; it was pale and set, her eyes were strained, but she had shed no tears; he sat there and recalled the merry journeys they had had together, side by side, on evenings like this, when he had been sorry the drive should ever end--how long this one was! The cab reached Cambridge Terrace at last. Mark instinctively looked at the upper windows of the house--they were all dark. 'Stay here, till I have asked,' he said to Mabel before he got out, 'we may--we may be too late.' * * * * * Vincent had been moved to his sleeping-room, where he was sitting in his arm-chair; the trained nurse who had been engaged to wait upon him had left him for a while, the light was lowered, and he was lying still in the dreamy exhaustion which was becoming more and more his normal state. He had received his death-warrant some months before; the harassing struggles against blight and climate in Ceylon, the succession of illnesses which had followed them, and the excitement and anxiety that he underwent on his return, had ended in an affection of the heart, which, by the time he thought it sufficiently serious to need advice, was past all cure. He had heard the verdict calmly, for he had little to make him in love with life, but while the book in which he had already begun to find distraction was unfinished, there was still work for him to do, and he was anxious to leave it completed. If the efforts he made to effect this shortened his life, they at least prevented him from dwelling upon its approaching end, and his wish was gratified. He fixed his mind steadily on his task, and though each day saw less accomplished and with more painful labour, the time came when he reached the last page and threw down his pen for ever.