was soothingly that she spoke, as a parent speaks to a child who must not know that it is leaving for a long, long journey. And would she kiss Jill? Yes. Jill drew her down and she bent still further and pressed her lips on Jill's forehead, but it was Jill who put her arms around her neck and kissed her on the lips, murmuring, 'Dear, darling Marthe!'
So she was gone, swiftly, silently, as she had come.
Graham stood still before the fire. He had a sense of overwhelming danger.
'You don't mind my promising for you, Dick?' Jill lay back on her pillows and spoke softly. She was tired. She wished to hide from him how tired; but he saw. 'You had to go, hadn't you?—Poor old creature. You ought to have gone long before. You really could have.'
'Yes;—oh, yes, I could have,' said Graham. He hardly heard what he was saying. His mind was fixed in a strange impulse. The sense of overwhelming danger was imminent and if he yielded to the impulse it would put an end—to everything. 'You see, the last time I saw her—she made me rather sick,' he said, and he turned from Jill and laid his hands on the mantelpiece and looked down at the flames.
'Yes—I know,' Jill strangely murmured. 'I mean—she made me rather sick, too, the last time I saw her.'
'I didn't tell you, because you were ill and I was afraid it would upset you. But I may as well now,' said Graham, his eyes on the fire and his mind fixed in
