once," replied the physician. He felt that he had offered his subtlest and most artistic prescription. More than most wives are valued, Dr. Thorne loved his.

But as he went downstairs a black frown caught him between the brows.

In the course of an hour he managed to dispatch a messenger to the court-house. Sixty patients clamored for him, but he wrote the note twice over, sitting in his buggy, before he sent the third copy:—

DEAR AVERY,—Your wife has suffered one of the attacks whose nature I explained to you some time ago. I found her condition serious, indicating a marked weakness of the heart. I consider that she had a narrow escape. You would not forgive me if I did not tell you, that you may govern your movements accordingly.

Yours as ever,
    ESMERALD THORNE.

Jean Avery lay with closed eyes, quite still, and smiling tranquilly. Only the invalid mistress of a home knows how to value the presence of another lady in a household where children and servants fill the foreground, and where, as Dr. Thorne once put it, "every care as fast as it arises is taken to the bedside of the patient." The ever-womanly arrived with Mrs. Thorne. In the repose which came with her coming, and did not go with her going, the sick woman lay sheltered for the remainder of the day. Her face, her voice, her motions, expressed the touching gratitude of one who has long since learned not to look beyond the bounty of temporary relief. Mrs. Thorne noted this; she noticed everything.

The telephone called towards noon, ringing rapidly and impatiently—operators, like horses, were always nervous under Marshall Avery's driving; and when an anxious message from the court-house reached the wife, she said, "Dear Helen!" as if it had been Helen's doing. And when they told her that Mr. Avery asked how she was, and would get home by mid-afternoon, and at any moment if she needed him, and would not leave her again that day, and that he sent his love to her and begged her to be careful for his sake, her breath fell so short with pleasure that they took fright for her.

"My husband is so kind to me!" she panted. Then her color came—a tidal wave, and her pulse, which had been staggering, fell into step and began to march strongly.

"But this is a miracle!" cried the doctor's wife.

"Love is always a miracle," Jean Avery said. Then she asked to have her hair arranged, and wanted an afternoon dress, and lace, and would have a bracelet that her husband gave her, and the turquoise pin he liked, and begged to be told that she looked quite well again, for "Marshall hates to see me ill!"

And the children—see that the children are dressed; and his slippers—they must be put beside the library table in that place he likes; not anywhere else, please, but just where he is used to finding them. And Kate will have dinner early; and about the soup—and the salad—and not to overdo the grouse; and to light the library fire—and were they sure she could n't go down herself to see to things, and get as far as the library sofa?

"Mr. Avery does n't like me not to meet him.... My husband is so good to me!" she urged, in the plaintive staccato that her short breath cut, till Helen's eyes blazed and then brimmed to hear her. And now Helen was gone, and the children; and Jean lay quite still and alone, smiling tranquilly, as we said.

Her thoughts were long-distance wires, as the thoughts of the sick are, and they covered the spaces of ether and of earth that afternoon—the unexplored wastes into which the soul invites no fellow-traveler. Her heart fled to the rose-red star of their early dream. They had loved as the young and the well, the brave and the bright, may love; passionately, as the brown and the blond do; and reasonably, as the well-mated and the fortunate can. They were of the same age, the same class, the same traditions; they knew the same people, who congratulated them in the same words; they had inherited the same ideals of life, and went buoyantly into it. Not so much as a fad had inserted itself between their tastes, and in their convictions they were mercifully not divided. At first their only hardship had been the strenuous denial of the professional life; but she never wished him to make money—she was quite happy to put up muslin curtains at twelve and a half cents a yard, while her friends hung lace at twenty dollars a window—and had flung herself into the political economy of their household with a merry and ingenious enthusiasm, which she wore as charmingly as she did the blond colors, the blue, the lavender, the rose, the corn, over which she strained her honest eyes and bent her straight shoulders to save dressmakers' bills. Since she had been ill she had tried—how hard no man could ever understand—not to grow careless about her dress. "The daintiest invalid I ever knew," Dr. Thorne used to say.

Marshall cared a good deal about such matters, was fastidious over a wrinkle, was sure to observe a spot or a blemish, while the immaculate might pass unnoticed for weeks; disliked old dresses; when she had a new one on he admired her as if she were a new wife, for a day or two. She was full of pretty little womanly theories about retaining her husband's devotion.... When had it begun to flag? She had made a science of wifehood, and applied it with a delicate art.... Why had it failed? ... No, no, no! Not that! Not that word, yet! Say rather, why had it faltered? With a tremulous modesty characteristic of her sweet nature, she scored herself for the disillusions of her married life, as if somehow the fault were hers.

How had it all come about? Was she fretful with the first baby? It seemed to have begun (if she thought very hard about it) with the first baby. She knew she had faded a little then. Pink was a crying baby. "I lost so much sleep! And it makes one look so, about the eyes. And then, as Marshall says, maternity affects the complexion."

Her thoughts came down from the rose-red star like aeronauts on parachutes, landing in fog and swamp. Oh, the weariness, the waste of it! For the more she thought, the more she felt herself like one hanging in mid-space—heaven above her, earth below, and no place for her in either. She could not fly. She would not fall. "And I 'm not very strong to be clinging and holding on, like this. One might let go ... and not mean to."

And yet she had held on pretty well, till the second baby came. She had never felt this moral dizziness till then, this something which might be called life-vertigo, that made it seem in mad, black moments easier to drop than to cling. For after the boy was born she was not well. She had never been strong since. And Marshall hated sickness. He was such a big, strong, splendid fellow! It had been very hard on Marshall.

He hated it so, that she hated it too. She had scorned the scouts of her true condition, and when the trouble at the heart set in, and he called it "only nervous," she said, "No doubt you are quite right, dear," and blamed herself for feeling somehow hurt. She did not speak of it to any one for a long time, after that. But when, one easterly afternoon, the air being as heavy as the clods of the grave, she lay gasping for life for three hours alone, not able to reach a bell or call for help, she sent for Dr. Thorne.

And he told her, for she insisted—and he knew his patient; not a woman to be wheedled by a professional lie—he told her the truth.

"Poor Marshall!" said Jean Avery. "It will be so hard on my husband! ... Don't tell him, doctor. I forbid you, doctor. I think he 'd take it easier if I told him myself, poor fellow!"

She did not tell him that day, for he did not come home; nor the next, for he had a headache; nor the third, for he was in excellent spirits, and she could not bear to. In fact, she waited a week before she gathered her courage to speak. One Saturday evening he did not go to the club, but was at home, and he had been very kind to her that