There is always a store of benevolence and magnanimity in the heart that beats at an altitude of nearly four feet from the ground. Wit, wisdom, and energy may go pit-a-pat "at the double" on lower levels, but great soulÈdness and probity only come to their perfection in a steadier region.

Beyond these last-quoted virtues Ralph Danby had few. He was rather lethargic and decidedly clumsy. His six-feet-three of flesh and blood was knotty with muscle, but, in the garments of the polite, the muscularity showed like adipose tissue and spoilt him. In feature he was pronounced perfect.

"Perfect as regenerate man can well be," raved a lady artist, who, before he had been in Hampstead a week, had implored him to pose for a painting of early Scandinavian classicism. He wore a Vandyke beard—not because he liked it, but to avoid the casualties of his native clumsiness, which made shaving as farcical as Heidelberg duelling—and permitted its amber waves to roam caressingly close to his chin with a negligence that was the more graceful because unstudied.

At first, when it became known that young Dr Danby intended stepping into his father's practice, Hampstead resented it. Cabinet Councils of "tabbies," assembling over their postprandial Bohea, declared they would none of him. A retired Army doctor, forsooth! What would become of their nervous ailments, their specially feminine disorders? If they had the finger-ache, he would be bound to suggest amputation; if liver or neuralgia, he would insist on active employment—those were the only formulÆ known to regimental sawbones, poor benighted things!

But when he came, when it saw the benign blue eyes and lordly physique of the new practitioner, the feline chorus changed its note, while neuralgia, migraine, and other indefinite and not unbecoming disorders became quite epidemical in his neighbourhood. Only a few daring persons ventured to harbour opinions in opposition to the vox populi, and those speedily argued themselves ignorant or prejudiced, or both.

There existed perhaps but one person of his acquaintance who was absolutely indifferent to the impression created in his new surroundings—the one and only person for whose goodwill Ralph Danby had ever cared. He had known her at Gibraltar, a laughing, rosy bride, brought out by the senior Major, a man almost double her years. But that seemed ages ago. The Major had been gathered to his fathers, and Mrs Cameron, with her baby girl, to the great regret of the regiment, had returned to the vicinity, if not to the care, of her parents in Maida Vale.

It was this departure, though it would have surprised him had he been told so, that inspired Ralph Danby with the notion that Army doctoring was a bore. He came to the conclusion that real work was all he wanted. What a field was open in metropolitan life with its suffering and pain for a man's labours—a man who was otherwise good for nothing! And then the reward—the smiles of the relieved—that existed always, when other satisfaction failed.

He realised he was down on his luck, but diagnosed no further, and sent in his papers. Farewell dinners followed, and the mess tried to carry him round the table at the risk of collective apoplexy (for he was a huge favourite in every sense of the word), then the Peninsula weighed anchor, and Gibraltar saw him no more.

It was some time, however, after taking over his new work that he ventured to call on Mrs Cameron. He respected her widowhood; he feared the renewal of his acquaintance might revive unhappy recollections; but he went at last.

He was pathetically nervous when introduced into the tiny drawing-room where Phoebe sat alone. But the moment he heard her rippling laughter he was reassured. The room was small, and Ralph was big and clumsy. In his advance one of those Algerian tables, so admirably constructed to bark the shins or bang the knees of unsuspecting mortals, gave way before him and scattered its bric-À-brac far and wide. This trifling incident served to put him on his old footing at once, and in fact to establish his identity, for Danby's reputation for wreckage had been universal as well as costly.

"At it again, you see, Mrs Cameron!" exclaimed he, as he hastened to right the impediment. "Allow me. I am so sorry. Allow me!" he gasped, while grovelling with her on the floor in search of some errant trinket which had rolled into space. She "laughed a merry laugh and said a sweet say" of forgiveness, while he noted a transient blush on her downy cheek. He was not a vain man, but he harboured a tiny wonder whether it had been born at sight of him or of the mere exertion of stooping.

"I have a practice quite near here," he volunteered aloud. "It was the stooping," decided the inward mentor regretfully.

"How curious!"

He did not think it so, but agreed.

"It is strange. My father is old, and he was quite pleased to retire when he found me fit for the berth. I thought life at Gib awfully monotonous, and was glad enough to throw it up."

He had not complained before Phoebe Cameron left, but the question of his sentiments did not come under discussion. They talked of old friends a little scrappily and with some constraint—so much had happened since they had met, and numerous recollections had to be skipped—until his hostess asked:—

"Would you like to see my wee Phoebe? She is growing wonderfully. She is nearly two years old now!"

Her voice sank with an inflexion of sorrow. The age of her child recalled the long blank which occupied the centre of her lifetime's sheet.

The big man's heart thrilled with pity. He longed to open his wide, protecting arms and fold the fragile creature to his breast; she seemed so sweet, so brave, yet so lonely.

But he answered bluntly enough:—

"Produce the youngster. I suppose she'll call me 'Dot Dandy' as the other kids used to!"

Phoebe was absent for a few moments, and then returned with a toddling article, half embroidery, half flesh, with cheeks like apples, and eyes wide with youthful criticism.

"This is Doctor Danby," introduced her parent, lifting the child and placing her on the guest's capacious knee, though still supporting the tiny waist with an assuring hand.

He and the juvenile scanned each other carefully. The grey eyes, the bronze curls, and rosy mouth—they were the exact presentments of her mother. He stooped and kissed them one by one.

Before an outsider he would have been for ever compromised, but fond mammas can see nothing extraordinary in any affectionate demonstration towards their offspring!

"Who am I, Phoebe?" asked he, dwelling tenderly on the name shared alike by parent and child.

"Ow is Dot Dandy," was the lisped reply. "Mammy, is Dot Dandy nice?"

Mrs Cameron hurriedly lifted the loquacious imp from its impromptu perch. Again "Dot" noticed a delicious flush on the transparent cheek, and his heart leaped within him.

"Pooh!" sneered the inward mentor again, "the lassie is substantial—too substantial for any woman to carry without colouring!"

"Mammy, is Dot Dandy nice?" clamoured Phoebe minor again.

Her mother took the precaution of ringing for the nurse before replying.

"Yes, darling. Very nice."

That time she did blush. Ralph could have sworn it!

How he reached home he never knew. The biggest men are the largest fools sometimes. His enormous heart drew its own pattern of her perfections, and coloured it with her beauty round and about. Her reflections of him never extended beyond the locality of her brain. He did not look half smart out of uniform—was awkward as ever, but kind-hearted, and her baby liked him! If it were ill, he would be the person to send for. But Phoebe must be taught not to chatter! Had it been anyone else but Dot——!

Danby's coachman, when not cogitating on the off-chances suggested by "straight tips" from stablemen in the mews, used to puzzle himself in the days which followed at the frequency of the doctor's visits to the tiny house in Maida Vale. He became conversant with the pattern of the window curtains, and began to cultivate a lively interest in the headgear of the "superior young person" who wheeled Miss Cameron's go-cart. As a reward of his attentions, the "superior young person," whose encyclopÆdic qualities were unbounded, certified to a fact he had long suspected, that there was absolutely no sickness in the establishment!

But Ralph Danby was happily unconscious of the delicate supervision of man and maid, and pursued the even tenor of his way in a delightful state of beatitude till one day he overstepped the bounds of public thoroughfare and found himself face to face with a warning to trespassers. In fact, he made an ass of himself and proposed.

Without rhyme or reason he placed his six-foot-three of cumbersome manhood at the disposal of a woman from whom he afterwards confessed he had never received the smallest encouragement. She had certainly never objected to his continual presence, but, to those who have known each other in a garrison town where daily meetings and calls are common, visits are not noted with the same importance as metropolitan formalities of like description.

Mrs Cameron had not yet returned to society, and consequently cultivated few acquaintances. Her intimates called as frequently as Ralph, whose arrival was never objectless. Sometimes there was a doll to be delivered to Phoebe minor; occasionally he produced tickets for some lecture on infancy or education; now and then he brought music which he especially wished to hear (he could recognise "God Save the Queen" if played at the end of a programme); and once he had ventured to offer flowers! But the quick march came to an abrupt halt through his own folly. Because one morning he found her with a complexion more like a rose petal than usual, because the birds made a perfect din of song outside, and the spring sun seemed to pour through every crack and cranny and say, "Winter is past," he thought her heart must be as love-flushed as his own. Always downright—blunt some people said—he invaded where angels might have feared to tread.

"Mrs Cameron—Phoebe—I love you. Will you marry me? Will you let me make you happy again?"

Two dove-grey eyes blinked wide with amazement; then, seeing the reality of his emotion, she stepped back a pace, and seemed to freeze as she stood.

The birds sounded discordantly; the sunshine lost all its warmth—it was but a winter gleam after all; the rose-bloom of her cheek changed to deadly pallor. Big man as he was, he grew giddy as he looked. He knew at once the magnitude of his vanity and his mistake, and cursed himself for having spoken.

"Doctor Danby, I—I—you do me honour. I thank you very much, but oh! why did you spoil our friendship with such folly?"

"Folly? To love you? I have never done a wiser thing in my life!"

"Pray do not speak of love. You know—you must know—that word to me is dead for ever!"

"But some day, in the future, you might——"

"My future, Doctor Danby, belongs to my child. I shall never allow any interest to come before my love for her. Will you understand this, and forgive and forget to-day as though it had never been?"

He was not a really vain man, or her frigid words, her rejection of his love, would have sent him from the house angered and mortified, never to return. But he was large-souled and childishly tender of heart, and thought, even in his disappointment, that, in her unprotected state, she might at times have need of him.

Because his demand had exceeded his deserts, and because he had received a merited snub for his rashness, there was no reason, he argued, that she should be deprived the right of using him as her friend.

He smiled a sickly assent and extended his hand.

"Good-bye, and I may come and see you sometimes still? It is not as if there were anyone else——"

Mrs Cameron interrupted hurriedly.

"Please do, and we will never reopen this subject again!"

"Never again!" swore poor Danby as he left the house—and he meant it.

In his own sanctum he conned over every speech of hers and found the interview had been bald to desolation. Not one green blade of sympathy even had she given to cheer the dreary wilderness of his life. She had wished to keep him as her friend, certainly; but that in itself was a dubious compliment. Had she cared for him ever so little, and felt bound by duty for her child's sake to sacrifice love, she would have avoided painful chances of meeting.

"She has evidently no fear of falling in love with me," groaned Ralph to himself. "I am not even sufficiently interesting to be dangerous."

This rankled for some time. He continued on his daily rounds, endeavouring, if possible, to avoid passing through the street in which his frosty idol dwelt. With dreary, lustreless eyes he received the blandishments of the feminine throng which had elevated him to popularity; with tired, joyless heart he buried himself in his lonely home after the treadmill hours were over. Only some exceptional case of suffering or technical interest had power to rouse him. He was but happy when ministering to the physical pain of others; if possible, he would have shared it. In mental trouble the absolute prick and smart of bodily injury seems a welcome inconvenience, for at least it admits of hope, the continued hope of recovery, to give impetus to life. He was neither mawkish nor sentimental—his years of scientific training had pruned such tendencies; but the inborn sympathy with his fellow-men which had prompted him to the choice of medicine as a career permeated every tissue of his medical knowledge and supplemented a powerful element of healing peculiarly its own. He had been ever ready to throw heart and soul into any case of interest or alarm, but now his patients found him more than ever devoted. They did not know that in their service alone the heart's blood of the man was kept from anÆsthesia. For nearly a month Ralph Danby avoided the house in Mervan Street; then with the inconsistency symbolic of great minds, he decided to go there at once. He counselled himself that half a loaf was better than no bread, and came rightly to the conclusion that if he intended calling again, the more he postponed the ordeal the more impossible would be the resumption of the old relations which had existed so happily before he had made a fool of himself.

On the doorstep he trembled—absolutely trembled (he who, in Egypt, had bandaged wound after wound, while bullets peppered the air with their metal hail)—but once in her presence, her serene composure was infectious, he was himself again, and almost forgot his last unhappy visit and the miserable interregnum of mental nothingness from which he had suffered. He might have been uneasy or constrained, but her calm suavity left him no opportunity. About her manner there was no spark of vanity, no simpering nor restraint—she was merely a well-bred young hostess entertaining an intimate friend.

In novels heroines are credited with the exhibition of complex emotions on the smallest provocation, but women of breeding in the nineteenth century are too good actresses to hang their hearts on their sleeves without exceptional cause. So Ralph Danby's little brougham came and went as of yore, and only in the solitary evenings, when reason unprejudiced criticised his actions, did he realise that again was he building a palace of Eros, and again its foundation was nothing but sand!

One evening, in the midst of his mental accusations, came a note:—

He hailed a hansom and was off in a moment.

The child was asleep in her crib, and Mrs Cameron watched uneasily by her side. The flushed face, hurrying pulse, the dry skin, and spasmodic breathing showed signs of fever. There were cases of diphtheria about, and he looked grave. But he decided to cause no unnecessary anxiety, and promised to return later. Then there was no concealing it; great care, he said, must be exercised, as the child was young and not over-strong. He put his opinion in that form to avoid being an alarmist, though the symptoms of the disease were unfavourable, and he dreaded the worst. But his own hope was so great that it tempered his report with consolation, for he had not the heart to warn Phoebe's mother of his fears.

After hours of anxious watching he could not but own to himself that no progress was made, and that the crisis must be awaited with dread. Should he tell her? Dared he? In front of him lay the probably dying little creature that was first in her life—before himself, before anything. Should she perish, there would be no barrier in the world between them; Mrs Cameron would have no duty but to herself!

A warm flush underlay his features—not the flush of pride or of satisfaction; it was the dye of shame for thoughts which placed himself and his egoistic desires before the life of the innocent being whose fate seemed to lie in his hands. It lasted not a moment, for he rose and left the house with a face quite ashen grey, whence all the light and fire of youth had faded. He was not long absent, for he had secured a passing hansom and paid a doubled fare for doubled speed.

He found Mrs Cameron alone with the child, while the nurse, worn out and weary, dozed in an adjacent room. Little Phoebe, who, earlier in the day, had been restless to a frightful degree, flinging about her waxen, chubby arms distractedly in the effort to gain breath, now lay almost motionless. Her mother, little experienced in any phase of illness, imagined that some slight improvement had taken place, but Ralph Danby knew better. The dull bluish pallor of the hitherto rosy skin; the rapid pulsation and agonised breathing; the feeble, sad croak that could not develop force enough for a cry—all told him there was no time to be lost.

He hastily opened the case for which he had journeyed home, and produced a small silver tube.

Mrs Cameron watched his movements with anxiety.

"What are you going to do?"

She was standing near the crib, midway between it and a table whereon he had deposited the case. As her eyes met his she read, by an extraordinary intuition which comes to most of us when reason fails, that he purposed some extreme course of action.

"What are you going to do?" she reiterated, somewhat sharply.

"I must give our little patient relief—instant relief—by means of this," he answered, hastily. She seemed to be wasting time with questions when every moment was precious. Still she stood motionless in front of him.

"How?" she persisted, in a voice so hollow that he could scarcely recognise it.

"I cannot explain now. You must trust me."

"How?" she cried, imperatively. "I will know." A light was dawning on her. She was recalling a case of which she had read in some old paper where the doctor lost his life to save the patient.

Danby frowned slightly, and his face looked worn and old. He was unaccustomed to be doubted or to have his authority questioned.

"If you will know, I shall insert this in the throat," he replied, deliberately advancing towards the cot, "and remove the mucus by suction."

"But you might catch the disease?"

"Possibly."

"You might—you might die?"

"Well?"

He was bending towards the child, and gently rubbing the tube with his handkerchief. With a sudden movement she flung herself between him and the crib, and placed her outstretched palms against his broad chest.

"You—shall—not!"

Her agonised touch, the expression of her wild, troubled eyes, made Dot's heart thump within him, but his face showed no sign.

With seeming severity he clasped her wrists and drew her to the adjoining dressing-room.

"It is a matter of life and death—your child's. I dared not tell you how serious—I hoped to save you alarm. Now there is no time to spare."

With that he returned to the room, closed the door, and locked it, leaving her in a passion of tears on the other side. Then he rang for the nurse, and proceeded.

Though at first his very soul seemed shaken with suppressed emotion, in a few seconds the sight of the infant's sufferings, its near approach to suffocation, overwhelmed all remembrance of his own personality, and restored the equilibrium. One thought of the woman, and his frame had throbbed and shivered like the forest trees in March; another, the greater, nobler thought of his science, his sacred mission at the hands of his Maker, and the trembling fingers grew steady.

With accuracy and judgment he inserted the shining channel into the windpipe of the sufferer; with patience and deliberation he held the end of the instrument in his mouth and sucked!

And all the while from the inner room came the sound of sobs—the passionate wail of the woman who had betrayed herself, who stood self-accused of neglecting her child. He heard the grievous sound as he strained the poisonous mucus from the tiny throat and breathed the death-laden air into his lungs. He knew that he swayed on the bridge between life and eternity; that possibly—nay, probably—he should never hear the sweet enchantment of her voice again; that if he should die it must be without so much as a pressure from her hand; and yet the great heart never wavered, but beat evenly like the pulse of some grand cathedral clock, which, spite of marriage chime or funeral knell, pursues its steadfast purpose for ever.

At last the work was over, and its reward, the free respiration of the little sufferer, was assured. Then a feeling of dizziness crept over his brain, and he hastened home, but not before summoning his partner to relieve him.

When Doctor Davis arrived, he learnt from the nurse and Mrs Cameron what had taken place. He was a practical, prosaic person, cumbered with a delicate wife and up-growing children, and censured Danby's conduct as foolhardy in the extreme.

"Is he bound to catch it?" asked Phoebe, with concern.

"Most certainly," replied the physician, scowling. He liked Ralph, and thought him much too sound a fellow to be lost through idiocy. "I believe there have been cases to the contrary—some solitary exceptions."

"But even then," pursued she, anxiously, "he need not die? He will recover?"

"Ten to one against it," said the doctor, bluntly, quite unconscious that the ghastly pallor of his questioner was due to more than weary watching by her child.

But Danby did recover. His magnificent constitution pulled him through in a manner little short of the miraculous. Perhaps hope had some occult healing power unknown to those who watched and tended him.

At the end of six weeks the burly "Dot" was himself again, and once more made his way to the little house in Mervan Street in glad expectation. A terrible disappointment awaited him. Phoebe major was not at home! Phoebe minor, however, executed gleeful saltations in honour of his arrival.

"How is 'oo, Dot Dandy? Twite, twite well? Phoebe pray Dod every day make Dot well!"

The big man stooped and kissed the tiny prattler, and thus avoided the necessity for speech. His heart seemed to have risen in his throat, and made a huge lump there.

Hurriedly taking his departure, he determined to call another day, but though he went again and again, it was with no better luck. Then he understood that Mrs Cameron's repeated absences were not the result of accident, but of design. She had been kind in her daily inquiries after him, but now that he had recovered, she was decided they should not meet.

A few days later the child had a feverish cold, and to his chagrin he heard that Doctor Davis had been sent for. That made it quite evident he was not wanted. He made no effort to go, but smarted under the sense of injury. His better reason argued that as she had intentionally broken with him, she could not demand his attendance on the infant without risk of unavoidable meeting. But why had she so behaved? Had he not saved her child, the light of her life, the aim of her future? Had he not determined studiously to forget her accidental show of anxiety for him, prompted by ignorance of the child's immediate danger? Why had she asked after him daily? Why had little knots of flowers been left by bairn and nurse, and why, ah, why! had the wee lips uttered a prayer for him?

"Perhaps the child had acted of her own impulse," sighed his modesty.

"Perhaps she had been so taught," panted his hope.

At last he determined to end the estrangement or let friendship perish in the attempt. He wanted nothing but her forgiveness; that he felt he deserved.

He knew every afternoon at five the nurse was relieved by Mrs Cameron, who watched in the nursery while the babe slept. That hour, therefore, was chosen for his visit. He mounted the stairs two at a time and rapped at the familiar door. There was no answer. He turned the handle and entered.

Phoebe major sat at the open window idle. She was reading the picture promise of the clouds. Phoebe minor in a cot slept rosily in the far corner of the room.

"Good afternoon," he whispered softly, in order not to disturb the little slumberer.

Mrs Cameron extended a hand, but no smile greeted him. She scarcely turned from her study of the skies. Poor Danby's heart felt sore and heavy laden. He asked a few trivialities regarding the invalid's health, and each query received an appropriate reply—nothing more.

He had taken a seat facing hers by the window, but even then only a profile view of the face he loved was accorded him.

At length he could endure no longer.

"Mrs Cameron, I regret having come instead of Davis. He was engaged. I had no idea I should be so unwelcome. Have I offended you irremediably?"

"No. Yes!" she corrected.

"How?"

He bent forward to induce her gaze to rest on him, but was foiled.

"If you will not tell me, how can I make amends? Was it because I locked you from your own room?"

"No."

He noticed the tight grasp of her soft fingers against the window-sill. She was not as callous as she wished to appear.

"Was it because I treated the child without your leave?"

"No."

Her frame shook slightly, and two crystal drops which she was too proud to wipe away stood in her eyes.

Very gently he covered her hand with his own great one; very softly he whispered in a voice he could scarcely steady:—

"Was it because I seemed ungrateful for the little love you offered me?"

The two tears rolled down her cheeks and dropped upon his wrist. With quivering mouth she strove to frame what her face confessed would be a lie.

He no longer hesitated, but caught her to his breast and crushed the naughty falsehood with his lips.

How long the operation would have lasted it is impossible to guess, for two shining eyes set in slumber-flushed cheeks peered suddenly from the distant cot, and a prattling voice, unabashed and lusty, shouted:—

"Tiss me too—Dot Dandy!"