But Julia, on that first visit, refused to get up. She and she alone at Daffadillies knew, with that mysterious prescience of the doomed, that death had only consented to stand off for a period; that only by husbanding every ounce of her strength could she hope to run the full race with him. So far, in that race, she was well ahead. But inevitably there would be setbacks, stumbles and faintings, when death would close up his distance. It was a fascinating race, yet terrible--this secret course which she and her pencil ran nightly, for her son's sake, against the ultimate doom. Times came when she tasted the very foreknowledge of victory; times when despondency took her by the shrunken throat, when it seemed as though not even the supremest effort of her pencil could outrun those cellules of consumption, those tiny implacable burrowers into the shrinking lung-tissue, which spored with every breath she drew. Once for twenty-four whole hours she relapsed into black despair. "Man's Law"--so alive through so many wonderful nights--was dead in her brain. Her body, too, was dying. She would perish, leaving her sword unforged, Ronnie's Gordian knot unsevered. Then, and then only, did Julia Cavendish decide to get up. "I feel I need some distraction," she told Sir Heron on his next visit. "A little literary work. It'll take my mind off things. Just a few rough notes for a new book." The physician, after much protest, yielded; and next afternoon Julia, duly dressed by the adoring Smithers and helped to a cushioned chair at the window by a proud nurse, sent for Aliette, who came bringing a great armful of flowers from the garden, and--Aliette gone--for Mrs. Sanderson, to whom, under pledge of secrecy and with the threat of instant dismissal should the secret be revealed, she confided the penciled contents of her manuscript-box. 2 May drifted into June. Forty miles away London seethed with strikes, with rumors of a general election, and with Hector Brunton's viciously victorious prosecution of three fraudulent bank directors. At Daffadillies brooded peace. Once more, typed, "Man's Law" grew alive. Once more, by daylight now, Julia ran her race with death. From half-past ten to half-past one she would sit at her desk by the open window--resentful of the faintest noise, of the slightest interruption, resentful even of the medicines which kept those tiny cellules at bay. At half-past one would come Mrs. Sanderson, her face an unhappy mask; then lunch; and, lunch over, sleep. Every afternoon nurse and Smithers would carry the invalid down the wide staircase to take tea with Aliette and Ponto, either in the book-shelved morning-room, or under the big cedar, whose branches just shadowed the base-line of the tennis-court.