cure. So I trusted to the blessed quiet of a sick-room--often so
healing to misery--to Jael's nursing, and his brother's love.

After a few days we called in a physician--a stranger from Coltham--
who pronounced it to be this Norton Bury fever, caught through
living, as he still persisted in doing, in his old attic, in that
unhealthy alley where was Sally Watkins's house. It must have been
coming on, the doctor said, for a long time; but it had no doubt now
reached its crisis. He would be better soon.

But he did not get better. Days slid into weeks, and still he lay
there, never complaining, scarcely appearing to suffer, except from
the wasting of the fever; yet when I spoke of recovery he "turned his
face unto the wall"--weary of living.

Once, when he had lain thus a whole morning, hardly speaking a word,
I began to feel growing palpable the truth which day by day I had
thrust behind me as some intangible, impossible dread--that ere now
people had died of mere soul-sickness, without any bodily disease. I
took up his poor hand that lay on the counterpane;--once, at
Enderley, he had regretted its somewhat coarse strength: now
Ursula's own was not thinner or whiter. He drew it back.

"Oh, Phineas, lad, don't touch me--only let me rest."

The weak, querulous voice--that awful longing for rest! What if,
despite all the physician's assurances, he might be sinking, sinking-
-my friend, my hope, my pride, all my comfort in this life--passing
from it and from me into another, where, let me call never so wildly,
he could not answer me any more, nor come back to me any more.