"Now you are going to rest?--and get well?" Marion smiled again. "I shall have holiday for a few months--then rest." "You won't live any more in the East End? You'll come to me--in the country?" said Diana, eagerly. "Perhaps! But I want to see all I can in my holiday--before I rest! All my life I have lived in London. There has been nothing to see--but squalor. Do you know that I have lived next door to a fried-fish shop for twelve years? But now--think!--I am in Italy--and we are going to the Alps--and we shall stay on Lake Como--and--and there is no end to our plans--if only my holiday is long enough." What a ghost face!--and what shining eyes! "Oh, but make it long enough!" pleaded Diana, laying one of the emaciated hands against her cheek, and smitten by a vague terror. "That does not depend on me," said Marion, slowly. "Marion," cried Diana, "tell me what you mean!" Marion hesitated a moment, then said, quietly: "Promise, dear, to take it quite simply--just as I tell it. I am so happy. There was an operation--six weeks ago. It was quite successful--I have no pain. The doctors give me seven or eight months. Then my enemy will come back--and my rest with him." A cry escaped Diana as she buried her face in her friend's lap. Marion kissed and comforted her. "If you only knew how happy I am!" she said, in a low voice. "Ever since I was a child I seem to have fought--fought hard for every step--every breath. I fought for bread first--and self-respect--for myself--then for others. One seemed to be hammering at shut gates or climbing precipices with loads that dragged one down. Such trouble always!" she murmured, with closed eyes--"such toil and anguish of body and brain! And now it is all over!"--she raised herself joyously--"I am already on the farther side. I am like St. Francis--waiting. And meanwhile I have a dear friend--who loves me. I can't let him marry me. Pain and disease and mutilation--of all those horrors, as far as I can, he shall know nothing. He shall not nurse me; he shall only love and lead me. But I have been thirsting for beautiful things all my life--and he is giving them to me. I have dreamed of Italy since I was a baby, and here I am! I have seen Rome and Florence. We go on to Venice. And next week there will be mountains--and snow-peaks--rivers--forests--flowers--" Her voice sank and died away. Diana clung to her, weeping, in a speechless grief and reverence. At the same time her own murdered love cried out within her, and in the hot despair of youth she told herself that life was as much finished for her as for this tired saint--this woman of forty--who had borne since her babyhood the burdens of the poor. CHAPTER XVII