"Mr. Locke," he checked me, "I'm not--thinking. I guess you're as good a judge as I am about what goes on in this house. After the way you've treated us from the first, I'd be pretty dull not to know you're as choice of Phillida as I am; and she is all that matters." "Who is?" demanded Phillida, returning. "Me? I haven't the least idea what you are talking about, Drawls, but I think Cousin Roger matters a great deal more than I do, just now. Perhaps now he is able to tell us about this attack, and if he should have a doctor. I have noticed for weeks how thin and grave he has been growing to be. If only he _would_ drink buttermilk!" I looked into the candid, affectionate face she turned to me. From her, I looked to her husband, whose New England steadiness had been tempered by a sailor's service in the war and broadened by the test of his experience in a city cabaret. A new thought cleaved through my perplexities like an arrow shot from a far-off place. "How much do you both trust me?" I slowly asked. "I do not mean trust my character or my good intentions, but how much confidence have you in my sanity and commonsense? Would you believe a thing because I told it to you? Or would you say: 'This is outside usual experience. He is deceiving us, or mad'?" They regarded one another, smiling with an exquisite intimacy of understanding. "Don't you see yourself one little, little bit, Cousin?" she wondered at me. "Anything you say, goes all the way with us," Vere corroborated. "Wait," I bade. "Drink your coffee while I think." "Please drink yours, Cousin Roger, all fresh and hot." I emptied the cup she urged upon me, then leaned my forehead in my hands and tried to review the situation. They obeyed like well-bred children, settling down on a cushioned seat together and taking their coffee as prettily as a pair of parakeets. They seemed almost children to me, although there was little difference in years between Vere and myself. But then, I stood on the brink where years stopped. With the next night, my triumphant enemy could be put off no longer. That I could not doubt. I cannot say that I was unafraid, yet fear weighed less upon me than a heavy sense of solemnity and realization of the few hours left during which I could affect the affairs of life. What remained to be done? On one of my visits to New York, I had called on my lawyer and made my will. There were a few pensioners for whom provision should continue after my death. The aged music master under whom I developed such abilities as I had, who was crippled now by rheumatism and otherwise dependent on a hard-faced son-in-law; the three small daughters of a dead friend, an actor, whose care and education at a famous school of classic dancing I had promised him to finance--a few such obligations had been provided for, and the rest was for Phillida. But now, what of Desire Michell?