was in every image of that returning spring. His heart beat uneasily under the vision of beauty.

When Anthony reached his empty. rooms, he walked to and fro till the late winter morning sent its unlovely, muffled light into the room; then he lay down on his bed without undressing. Sleep caught him and flung him like an enemy.

When he awoke it was late, and he could hurry through the early details of the day and let the hurry blind him. Anthony was only aware of an intense uneasiness awaiting him. He had to take a minor bone operation at the hospital for Hilton Laurence. It was a tedious, ticklish small operation on which Anthony could force his mind; he did not let himself think of anything beyond it. The usual instruments, the heavy net of the ether fumes filling the theater, came down like a shelter between him and his stalking fear.

After the operation he went the round of his wards, but here the sense of emergency died out and refused to support him. Kitty came into the wards and destroyed them: Kitty crying by the billiard-table, Kitty giving him a wild, sudden kiss beneath the sober beeches, Kitty smiling into the storm of rain that beat against their faces as they tore down the long, white roads, Kitty cowed and silent in the tower room before the enormity of Anthony's disillusionment.

The patients felt the quality of Anthony's attention was different; there was no strength in it. He looked at them, listened and commented on what they told him, but the force he used on them and for them was no longer there. It was reserving itself for an unknown ordeal; they could not touch it.

Anthony stopped to look at his bone case, slowly coming back to consciousness from the world into which the ether had mercifully plunged him. The white, inexpressive face on the pillow, with drugged, blank eyes, roused in him a sense of envy. This man could get through his worse moments buried in unconsciousness. Anthony was alive and aware as a man tied to a stake and facing flame is aware.

afternoon, and then hurried with a desperate sense of frustration toward Trevor Road. It was an unexpected small road lying between two main thoroughfares, a small, unmeaning little byway of low, fawn-colored houses.

The street was respectable, but dingy; it seemed planted there without intention, and it was difficult to imagine Kitty in any place so unobtrusive and so without the forms of life.

Peckham opened the door to Anthony, and Peckham, too, was changed. Her face was older and smaller than Anthony remembered it. She had faded, and become uncertain of herself. Her standards of life had fought with her love for Kitty. Love had, in the end, triumphed, but at the expense of Peckham's solidity; she could go on serving Kitty without believing in her, but there was less of Peckham left to serve.

She was glad to see Anthony, but her eyes told him that though she would rather see him than any one else, he had come too late to save her ruined standards.

She said a little dryly:

"It's a long time, sir, since we 've seen you. You'll find Miss Kitty upstairs; she has the front rooms on the right."

Kitty had the most expensive spot in the inexpensive house. There were more windows and heavier curtains in her room than in any of the others, and it was filled with larger pieces of insignificant furniture. Massive, curiousheaded chrysanthemums bloomed oddly in hideous vases, and a box of chocolates lay unopen on the table.

There was a fog outside, and some of it had crept into the overloaded little room and given it an air of mystery. Kitty was sitting over the fire, crouched on a large blue velvet footstool.

Her small, white face had a look of stubborn suffering. She glanced unsmilingly at Anthony over her shoulder.

such a joke rubbing it into the other goats that they 're in the same box as you. There are sure to be some pious ones who thought they 'd get off cheap and leave you to the burning.

"What do you think of my new quarters? Third-class lodgings rather remind one of hell, don't they?" She waved her hand in the direction of the spotty, leaden oil paintings on the walls. "It's not very amusing, is it?"

"You'll have to tell me why you 're here before I can say whether it's amusing or not," said Anthony, carefully. "People's ideas of amusement differ. I did n't find 'Yellow Slippers' entertaining last night, for instance."

"It was better than the alternative, anyhow," said Kitty, defensively. "Fancy being shut up with these spiky bookcases and blue roses all the evening! Personally, I consider my present surroundings a certificate of my respectability. Poor old Peckham! You might tell her it strikes you like that; it would please her. I should n't stay in a place like this if I were going in for gilded rapture, should I?

"The truth is, I 'm stony broke. I 've forgotten all about the two ends somebody or other tries to make meet. I have n't even got one; and if I had, I 'd sell it for twopence."

Anthony's eyes rested on Kitty's jeweled fingers and on her barbaric dress of wall-flower and old gold.

"Well," he said, "you ought to see your way to twopence."

"That 's clever of you," she said approvingly. "Any one else would have offered me fifty pounds, and I should have no use whatever for fifty pounds. What I want is five thousand a year and no questions asked."

"Even that," said Anthony, "you might get if you put your mind to it." "Not without questions," said Kitty, quickly. "If people do anything for you at all, they want to know what you do with it, and all about you. Then they try to make you do something else. Curiosity is so tiresome! I never want to know anything I don't know already; the kind of things you can be told are n't the least interesting."

"I'm afraid they have a distinct interest for me," said Anthony, slowly.

"I came here to find out one of them to-day."

Kitty looked at him appealingly.

"Did n't you just come to see me?" she murmured. "Don't ask silly questions, and after I 've warned you so nicely, too, and I was n't feeling nice when you first came in. I might quite easily stop being nice now if you bother me about anything."

"Kitty," interrupted Anthony, "I'm sorry, but I don't care a damn whether you 're nice or not. I 've got to find out now what is the matter with your shoulder."

Kitty stammered in a gust of frightened anger. She flung her head back, and her face grew pinched and changed, as a flower withers and alters under a touch of frost.

mean?" she said nothing the matter

"What do you sharply. "There is with my shoulder. You 're stupid and interfering. I wish you had n't come." "Still, I have come," said Anthony, "and I 've got to find out."

He got up and took her very gently by both arms. She twisted under his hands, and struggled madly against him like a wild thing.

"Let me go," she muttered between clenched teeth. "I hate you! I 've always hated you! Let me go, Anthony!"

But he did not let her go. He held her with a gentle force against which all her struggles failed her. She sank passively against him; the wild throbbing of her whole being stilled itself. She neither fainted nor cried.

Her eyelids covered her eyes. There was no color in her face except the delicate touches of rouge that stained its deadly whiteness. Anthony carried her over to a small, hard sofa by the window and laid her down on it. She was no heavier than a child.

Kitty opened her eyes and smiled at him. Her anger was gone as suddenly as it had come.

"Do what you like," she said, shutting her eyes again. "After all, it does n't really matter what anybody knows."

Anthony fixed his face so that, if she looked at him later, she would not see his expression change. He was aware of what he had to meet, and he knew

that he must show nothing. The strength of her resistance to him had been the strength of her fear. He became aware of every sound in the small room: the muffled noises of the foggy street; a stir below him in the diningroom, where some visitors were pushing back their chairs; the plunge and vent of the small flames in the fireplace; and Kitty's light, swift breathing under his hands.

He made his examination methodically and quickly. It was what he had feared, but it was worse, because not even Anthony had dreamed that Kitty could bear in silence such a burden of hidden pain. The lump on her shoulder and beneath her arm extended in a long line down her side; the growth had probably been very rapid for the last six months. It was already close to the wall of her lungs, if the poison had not already invaded it. He guessed from the unstable lightness of her breathing that the invasion had already taken place.

He finished his examination without comment, drawing the shimmering dress lightly over her deadly secret. He knew that Kitty's eyes were on him now, and he turned his own to meet them. They showed her nothing but his steadiness.

"I hate lying down," said Kitty, impatiently. She pulled herself up by a hand on his shoulder, shivered a little, and moved back to the fireplace. For a while neither of them spoke; then Anthony broke the haunted silence.

"It may be one of two things," he said quietly. "I must get a second opinion before I decide which it is. Hilton Laurence had better see you with me to-morrow; but if you don't mind, I must ask you a few questions first. I think we can do something about it, you know."

"Oh, but I don't want anything done," said Kitty, quickly; "that's just why I have n't told any one. I arranged it all in my mind-you see, I hate fuss and doctors and nurses. I was afraid from the first it might be rather bad, and I simply won't be an invalid. Directly I've had as much as I can stand, I shall send Peckham off for a holiday, and then. I shall go away by

myself, to some nice, undisturbed place. and take veronal. It's just been a kind of race between the fun and the pain. I did n't mean to stop until I 'd had enough fun, and I meant to stop if I had too much pain; but after I'd decidedit was-it was enough-" Anthony lowered his eyes. The room was foggier than before. Kitty leaned forward a little. The words that came from her seemed forced against her will; they crept out into the dim air like frightened things. "I've had enough pain," she whispered.

Their hands groped for each other. Anthony knelt down beside her and put his arms round her waist. He held her to him as if he could hold off the onslaught of all enemies; but it was Anthony who broke down.

Kitty drew his head into her lap and stroked his hair.

"It does n't matter," she said under her breath. "It 's not as bad as you think. It'll be all right, Tony. I won't go on too long. I'm glad you know now. I did n't want you to, because I hate the ugliness; but you must n't mind so much. You see, my life is n't really anything very much. I'm just waste like a bit of dust that dances in the sunlight. It looks pretty jumping up and down, but when the light 's gone, it's only dust."

"Don't, Kitty! don't!" said Anthony. "I can't stand it. I'm so horribly strong myself, and I can't use it for you. I can't get any of it out."

"But there is n't anything for you to worry about," Kitty urged. "I've had all the things I wanted,—I mean all the things I could have if I 'd lived to be a hundred, and it would bore me awfully to grow old and fat, perhaps, with wrinkles. Now I shall just slip out, nicely and young, without any fuss."

Anthony pulled himself together.

"Not yet," he said, "Kitty darling. You have n't begun to have the things you want yet, because I had n't got them to give you before; now I have. Only give me a chance. Let me fight your pain! For God's sake, Kitty, let me fight it!”

She looked curiously down at him.

"How funny of you to care still," she said, "when I thought I'd killed it!

What is it

Dear old Tony, I did n't mean you to have this wretched time. that you want me to do?"

"Be patient," he urged her; "do what I tell you. I'll have to see Hilton Laurence first before I 'm sure, but there are things that can be done for you. I admit it's a fight, but you'll have the whole of us on your side. Everything I am and everything I can do will go into this fight, Kitty."

Her eyes looked gravely at him. She seemed to be weighing for him and for him alone the cost of what he asked her. She shut herself out of it as completely as if she had already ceased to exist. Then she said gently:

"All right, old boy. I promise you I won't back out of it."

CHAPTER XXIII

THE two men discussed the case for an hour before Kitty came. They were busy men, and an hour was an unusually long time in which to go through the claims of even the strangest case. Kitty's case, though there was an element of doubt about it, was not strange; but it was, in a doctor's phrase, a "nearly perfect case." Hilton Laurence, poring over the diagram Anthony had drawn for him, had never seen one so far advanced.

"And she can come here," he said incredulously, "in a taxi? She must be a strong young woman; most women, or men, for the matter of that, at her stage of the proceedings would be lying drugged in bed, with a couple of nurses in attendance."

"She is n't like the ordinary run of women," said Anthony. "She has the thoroughbred's nerve; that's what seems to give her a chance, a fighting chance."

Hilton Laurence glanced quickly at Anthony.

"Do you know her very well?" he demanded. "As a friend, I mean, as well as a patient."

Anthony hesitated a moment, then he faced his friend's eyes.

"I know her about as well," he said, gravely, "as a man knows a woman when he can think of nothing else." Hilton Laurence shook his head.

"Ah," he said, "that 's a pity. I'd better do the operating myself, then. You can help me if you like, of course, but you'll be asking a good deal of yourself, Arden. If I were you, I 'd leave the case entirely in another man's hands."

"I can't do that," said Anthony, quickly, "but I'll be glad if you'll do the actual operating. I'll see her through the rest; I am asking more of her than I am of myself. But you have to ask a good deal of people in order to be of any use to them."

A discreet parlor-maid came in with a card.

"Show her in," said Hilton Laurence without looking at Anthony.

Kitty came into the room as if she were arriving at a party-a party where she expected to be very successfully entertained. She looked triumphantly well and perfectly mistress of .herself. She wore a set of Russian sables, a little gold-brown fur cap came down low over her dark curls, her emerald ear-rings danced beneath it as Anthony remembered they had danced and flashed the first time he saw her.

She threw back her furs with a little gesture of relief; they were lined with green brocade and showed a honeycolored chiffon blouse.

Kitty moved like the light Princess in George McDonald's fairy-tale — the Princess who could not weep because she had no gravity.

At Anthony's introduction she gave Hilton Laurence an intimate, disarming smile. Kitty's smile was at once an invitation to good-fellowship, and a promise that no tiresome exactions would follow. It was a smile that said, "Here I am, and I 'm sure you 're going to be awfully nice to me, but you won't find me a bit of a bother afterward."

The two men were aware that they had ceased for the moment to be doctors: Kitty had transformed them into alert and friendly hosts. Hilton Laurence held a chair for her, and Anthony was sent to find a biscuit for her Pekinese.

"I hope you don't mind dogs," Kitty explained. "As a matter of fact, Algy is n't a dog; he 's a Chinese dragon. You can't keep a real dog in London,