It was quite true: Mrs. Darkham was at the very portals of death. Whether those great gates were to be opened for her, or she could be dragged back from them, was the question that troubled the physicians who attended her.

Perhaps it troubled her husband more than them. He was sitting now in his library, in the big chair, with his arms hanging listlessly over the arms of it, and his head pushed somewhat forward. He was thinking.

The doctors had come and gone, and both were agreed. It was almost an impossibility, but not quite; she might, if such and such a change occurred, live. If not, death lay before her—a death into which she would enter without revisiting, even in thought, this world again. Dr. Bland, an elderly man, and one of great and deserved reputation, gave it as his opinion that if death did not ensue in a very few hours, hope might be entertained. Dillwyn had nodded an assent, and had said a few words too—to the effect that such grave cases had been known to recover even after hope seemed at an end. He had kept his eyes carefully averted from the husband of the injured woman whilst saying this. He had looked at him when he first entered the room, but he could not trust himself to look again. There was something terrible in Darkham's face, something hungry, ravenous. An animal stalking its prey might have looked like that.

And now Darkham sat alone in his library thinking—thinking. They had given it as their opinion that she would die—those two who left—that she would die! Would leave him free— free of her accursed company!

A sort of fierce joy rose up and seized upon him. It caught and shook him. Free! free! After all these years! Free! She was dying. Surely, certainly! In a few hours her breath would cease, and no more would her odious, vulgar words and accents make him shrink and shudder. She would be gone to the Great Unknown, and he—-

And it would be none of his doing—none! Here the great passionate joy that thrilled him seemed to culminate. He would be rid of her, without a single effort of his own. Had he even dreamed of making an effort?.... He would be quit of her in an hour or two—a day at latest. Surely the stars in their courses were fighting for him!

What was it they had said, those two? that if—if—he pressed his hands, both of them, to his head—that if she lasted until morning she might recover! Fools! She would not recover. Death was on her face when last he saw her. Pshaw! he was a better judge than either of them. Bland—an old man, too old; and Dillwyn—a young idiot, who followed his leader naturally! But he—he knew!—he who was in the prime of life, and had studied death—and life—in all their varied ways.

Yes, he knew! Siva, the Destroyer, lay hovering above the woman —whom the law called his wife—with outspread wings, awaiting the moment to descend and clutch his prey. Soon—soon—let it be!

Oh, to be delivered from her! From this creature who made life a torture; who had dragged him with a chain all these interminable years—the years of a marriage that had damned him! When he could have risen, that chain had nailed him to the earth, had clipped his soaring wings, had withered every moment of his life. Truly a young man starting in life should look well to the way he is going, and should choose a wife meet for him. Marriage is not for an hour, but for all eternity—sometimes!

This one, however! It will not last so long. This marriage will end soon, thank—-

He broke off abruptly. Who was he thanking?

He rose suddenly and went to the door. He would go upstairs and see how things were going on. He shook a little as he put his foot upon the first step of the stairs, and looked back as if he would willingly change his mind and return to the library. But he overcame himself, and went steadily upstairs.

So he went, and entered the room, and beckoned to the nurse in charge that she need not stay. She rose at his bidding, and slipped through the farther door, glad enough to get away for and hour or so. Her employer was a doctor and the husband of the sick woman under her charge, and so she felt safe in leaving her. Besides which, it was a hopeless case. The nurse had seen many such in the London hospitals, and though some as bad had pulled through, still, the percentage lay the other way.

Darkham went up to where the silent figure lay, and ruthlessly pulled back one of the curtains at the end of the old-fashioned bedstead.

The light from the dying day streamed in through the window, and lay on the dull, yellow face that rested on the pillow. It lit it up and showed it in all its ugliness.

Darkham bent over it—lower—lower still, and looked—and looked again. Was there a change? was there?

Already the face looked like that of a corpse. The lips were a little parted, as if the strength to close them was gone, and the upper teeth showed through them in a ghastly fashion.

And yet it seemed to the husband bending over her that there was some slight return of strength, of consciousness, in the face beneath him. It was so slight as to be all but unseen by any, save one passionately interested either in her recovery or her death. If, after all—-

He bent still lower, and then raised himself with a frown and a quick sigh. No, he had been mistaken. Death would be her portion this night. The two men who had just left had said it. Well, they were right. She would die to-night.

He sat down in a distant arm-chair that still gave him a full view of the bed, and gazed with uncompromising sternness at the form thereon.

He fell a-musing again. How death-like she looked! How close to the last breath! Just a step one way or the other—this way to life, that way to the grave. A touch, a single movement, and she would be beyond the line that divides the darkness from the light.

Great heavens! how, even in the helplessness of her, her face retains its old expression! The vulgar sneer still dominates it, the drawn lips are still replete with venom. What a life he has had with her! A life? Nay, a death.

The night was descending, but out of the misty darkness of the room a girl's face stood—calm, cold, lovely. There from the end of the room it looked at him, the eyes shining clear as day and full of truth.

He turned uneasily, and rose and began to pace the room stealthily, silently, yet with a sort of cruel spring in every step. It was as though he could hardly keep himself in; as if some vitality within him was at work, and urged him forward— forward—always forward.

Why had the accident been so slow a thing? Death—instantaneous death—how much more merciful it would have been to her, to him! A heavier fall, by half an inch or so, and all would have been at an end. There would have been no more room left for doubt, for fear, or for joy. He did not mince matters to himself as he walked there to and fro like a caged lion. He was strong enough to tell himself the truth.

He stopped himself in his strange hurrying up and down, and once more approached the bed. He bent over her and lifted her hand that lay so miserably helpless within his, and then let it fall again.

It sank upon the coverlet with a little dull thud, scarce audible, save to him whose ears were strained to hear, whose senses were so preternaturally on the alert. Why had her head been so hard, or else those flags so soft! A less thing had killed a score of fools before this.

Something in her face again arrested him. Surely there was a change. He placed his ear close to her mouth and listened. When he uplifted himself presently his face had taken a grayish tinge. Her breath was certainly stronger and steadier.

He went back to the arm-chair and seated himself slowly in it.

He rose, as though he found it impossible to be still, and laid his hand upon the mantelpiece. His grasp was so hard that his knuckles stood out white against the black marble. That devil, Dillwyn, had said she might recover. No doubt his hope was father to his opinion. He would do him, Darkham, a bad turn wherever he could. There had been occasions lately in the neighbourhood when this young fool thought—strove—to wrestle with him in professional matters. There was that affair of General Montgomery's the day before last when Dillwyn had been called in to the Cedars. The general was an important person in the place, and though scarcely en rapport with Darkham, had generally employed him up to this. He thought of Dillwyn, of Agatha's face as he had seen it at Miss Firs-Robinson's dance—looking into Dillwyn's—of the preference shown to the latter by General Montgomery and a few other unimportant people, but people who always mean the thin end of the wedge in such affairs, and his clasp upon the arms of the chair grew tighter.

He broke off and glanced again at the bed, this time hurriedly, shortly. He saw her there, motionless, torpid, her sullen breaths coming with strange trouble from her breast. When would they cease! That was the one thought. When they ceased he would be free.

Presently he crept towards her again, and again bent over her and listened. He had not been mistaken, then! Yes, the breath was stronger; he even imagined now that her hand stirred a little. He stood up. A minute passed in which he hardly breathed.

In that minute he knew what he was going to do.