“But now, Charlie,” she went on, with a sudden change of tone from the assumed merriment in which they had both innocently disguised the anxieties lying in both breasts, “I have got a piece of news for you—very important, good news. You are to go for a long sea voyage. It is all arranged. Dr. Ivery says so.” There was a moment’s pause. “But it is impossible, Lucy,” said the young husband gravely. “And that being so, it is well for us to remember that, could I get it, it might do me no real good.” “But you can get it,” Lucy cried, almost passionately. “Of what good are our savings, small as they are, if they are not to help you to—to recover health,” she said with a gasp. “Lucy, my dear,” said Charles Challoner, putting his arm about her and drawing her close to him, “could it do me good to go away, knowing that every day of the holiday brought want nearer to you and the boy and myself? Would not all the good I might gain be undone if I had to return home and begin life again under the hardest and worst conditions, struggling for each day’s bread, dreading lest another attack might leave you not only a widow, Lucy, but penniless, perhaps in debt?” “Ah, I own all that, Charlie,” she admitted, gently withdrawing herself from his clasp that she might gaze straight into his eyes, “but I have thought it all out, and planned everything, so that this shall not be. You must arrange for a year’s leave of absence from your office; I think the firm will give you that—you leaving your salary to be paid to whoso shall temporarily undertake your work.” “And am I to lose the little business I am gathering up for myself—my three or four private clients?” he asked piteously, as if he felt himself already yielding to the sweet dominance of her will. “Transfer them to your _locum tenens_, too,” she said, “or even lose them; something may have to be sacrificed. Then from our little hoard take what will suffice for a thoroughly long sea-voyage—there must be no doing it in a half-and-half way. And leave the rest in the bank.” “The rest in the bank!” echoed poor Charlie. “There won’t be much to leave after paying for a long journey for you and me and the boy. And it will cost something to keep the house going while we are away, or we should lose dreadfully if we tried to sell leasehold and furniture at a pinch.”