"Did SHE say it?" Sister Soulsby permitted herself to ask.

For answer Theron bit his lips, and drew his chin under the fur, and
pushed his scowling face into the pillow. The spasmodic, sob-like gasps
began to shake him again. She laid a compassionate hand upon his hot
brow.

"That is why I made my way here to you," he groaned piteously. "I knew
you would sympathize; I could tell it all to you. And it was so awful,
to die there alone in the strange city--I couldn't do it--with nobody
near me who liked me, or thought well of me. Alice would hate me. There
was no one but you. I wanted to be with you--at the last."

His quavering voice broke off in a gust of weeping, and his face frankly
surrendered itself to the distortions of a crying child's countenance,
wide-mouthed and tragically grotesque in its abandonment of control.

Sister Soulsby, as her husband's boots were heard descending the stairs,
rose, and drew the robe up to half cover his agonized visage. She patted
the sufferer softly on the head, and then went to the stair-door.

"I think he'll go to sleep now," she said, lifting her voice to the
new-comer, and with a backward nod toward the couch. "Come out into the
kitchen while I get breakfast, or into the sitting-room, or somewhere,
so as not to disturb him. He's promised me to lie perfectly quiet, and
try to sleep."

When they had passed together out of the room, she turned. "Soulsby,"
she said with half-playful asperity, "I'm disappointed in you. For a man