I thought of the utter youth of Mrs. Lithway; the little white teeth that showed so childishly when she laughed; her small white hands that had seemed so weighed down with a heavy piece of embroidery; her tiny feet that slipped along the polished floors--a girl that you could pick up and throw out of the window. “Certainly not. Would you?” “I should think so!” He smiled. “We’ve been very happy here. I don’t think she would like to move. I shan’t suggest it to her. And mind”--he turned to me rather sharply--“don’t you hint to her that the house is the uncanny thing you and that fool Wender seem to think it is.” I saw that there was no going ahead on that tack. Beyond a certain point, you can’t interfere with mature human beings. But certainly Lithway looked ill; and if he admitted ill health, there must be something in it. It was extraordinary that Mrs. Lithway saw nothing. I was almost sorry--in spite of the remembered radiance of the vision on the porch--that Lithway had chosen to fall in love with a young fool. I rose. “Love must be blind, if your wife doesn’t see you’re pulled down.” “Oh, love--it’s the blindest thing going, thank God!” He was silent for a moment. “There are a great many things I can’t explain,” he said. “But you can be sure that everything’s all right.” I was quite sure, though I couldn’t wholly have told why, that everything was at least moderately wrong. But I decided to say nothing more that night. I went to bed. Lithway _was_ ill; only so could I account for his nervousness, which sometimes, in the next days, mounted to irritability. He was never irritable with his wife; when the tenser moods were on, he simply ceased to address her, and turned his attention to me. We motored a good deal; that seemed to agree with him. But one morning he failed to appear at breakfast, and Mrs. Lithway seemed surprised that I had heard nothing during the night. He had had an attack of acuter pain--the doctor had been sent for. There had been telephoning, running to and fro, and talk in the corridors that no one had thought of keying down on my account. I was a little ashamed of not having waked, and more than a little cross at not having been called. She assured me that I could have done nothing, and apologized as prettily as possible for having to leave me to myself during the day. Lithway was suffering less, but, of course, she would be at his bedside. Naturally, I made no objections to her wifely solicitude. I was allowed to see Lithway for a few minutes; but the pain was severe, and I cut my conversation short. The doctor suspected the necessity for an operation, and they sent to New York for a consulting specialist. I determined to wait until they should have reached their gruesome decision, on the off chance that I might, in the event of his being moved, be of service to Mrs. Lithway. In spite of her calm and sweetness, and the perfect working of the household