“D O YOU think it wise for me to go in?” asked Goddard.

“She has been asking for you,” said the nurse. “It may do her good; but don’t speak to her.”

“Then she has definitely turned the corner.”

“Yes; at last. But her recovery depends upon absolute quiet. It is the heart now. A sudden excitement, and then”—she snapped her fingers—“syncope.”

“That is to say—sudden death.”

“Of course,” said the nurse.

“I shall merely sit by her side for ten minutes,” said Daniel. “You are sure it will please her?”

“It will be a sign of forgiveness,” said the nurse. She sighed. “Ah! poor thing! I’ll go and prepare her.”

Goddard sat down wearily in the stiffly furnished drawing-room to await his summons, and rested his head in his hands. He was very tired. The strain, mental and physical, of the past three months had told upon him. His face was worn and yellow, and his eyes were rather too bright for health. A strange thing for him, he had been driven to seek medical advice for insomnia. The prescription was immediate rest and change. He shrugged his shoulders. After the election, perhaps.

Intense political feeling prevailed in the division. Goddard’s influence was such as to leave none lukewarm. The conflict was raging fiercely. One of the heaviest polls on record was anticipated. The strain of candidature would have been great in ordinary circumstances. Coming as it did upon an already over-worked man, it was dangerous. And then there was Lizzie’s illness. He had already come to town several times to satisfy himself that all was being done for her that money and skill could accomplish. It had been a matter of feverish anxiety lest any act of omission on his part should endanger her recovery.

He sat with his head in his hands, staring at the pattern of the carpet, too tired to think coherently. To-morrow was polling day. He would have to get back that evening. By the registers he ought to get in. “Daniel Goddard, M.P.”—a name to conjure with in a few years’ time. And yet there was something missing. He knew what it was only too well. It might have been. He would have seen her in Hough to-morrow—eager, radiant, driving about the polling-booths, wearing his colours. And if he won—the joy of standing before her in his victory! But the other picture rose up before him. All through the election he had been haunted by the two women. He had wrestled with passionate desires. One night, when news had come that Lizzie lay between life and death, a horrible, overwhelming longing that she might die had kept him awake till the morning, when he rose and took the first train to town, to assure himself that no stone was being left unturned in order to save her. He remembered now some of Emily’s descriptions of the horrors of that bed-side, and he shivered. Thank God it was over. She wanted to see him. Perhaps this might mark a change in their lives. He wondered whether she knew anything of the election. Perhaps she might take a pride in being the wife of a Member of Parliament. But what good could it do her? It would not bring fresh interests into her life. Yes, it was hopeless. Any common woman in the street would be as fit a companion for him. And again the longing for the companionship he had lost came upon him, and his thoughts, in his weary mood, lingered over the witchery of her odd name—Rhodanthe.

“I am sorry to have kept you waiting, Mr. Goddard,” said the nurse, coming in. “There were some odds and ends to do in the room. You’ll be very, very quiet, won’t you?”

“You are sure there is no danger?” asked Goddard.

The nurse smiled at his insistence.

“Don’t speak to her or make her talk. That is all,” she said.

Goddard entered the sick-room on tiptoe. At the door Emily met him on her way out, and whispered a caution not to stay too long. He went to the bedside. Lizzie was lying very still and white. The flesh had left her cheeks; they were pinched, her features sharp, the skin drawn away tight against the bones. Her colourless lips hung loose; her teeth were prominent—a death’s head rather than a living woman. Goddard was shocked to the heart. He scarcely recognised her. Not only did he fail to see in her any traces of the girl he had once thought to love, but also she was no longer the woman he had hated.

“So you’ve come,” she whispered, moving a feeble hand.

He took it in his, tried to smile to reassure her. Her lips moved again.

“Won’t you kiss me?”

Her voice had not changed. It lessened the strange sense of unfamiliarity with which he had been regarding her. There was an involuntary touch of peevishness in the tone. He bent down and kissed her cheek.

“Make haste and get well, Lizzie,” he said in a low voice.

She seemed satisfied with this, for she half closed her eyes, and let her hand slip from his on to the counterpane. Daniel sat down in the chair facing the small table by the bedside, on which were a bottle of medicine and glass, a bunch of violets in water, and her Bible. This last was a beautifully bound volume, edged with brass, and closed with a heavy clasp. Daniel had given it to her in the early days of their marriage, when she was eager to surround herself with all the obvious essentials of gentility. He had learned lately from Emily’s chatter how she had insisted upon this Bible being placed near her. “As if the Holy Book could charm away the other things,” Emily had said in an awed tone.

The sight of it carried his thoughts back. Only once before had he sat by her side like this—in this very room, too. She had been very white and still then, but young and fresh, with gladness in her eyes that had awakened within him an answering thrill. And there had been a little wee pink thing at her breast. It had fluffy black down on its head, he remembered. In this room, too, it had died three years later of diphtheria. The room’s associations grew upon him. It was here that he had first come by the knowledge of the curse of her life. She was lying speechless one evening on the bed. He had bent over her unsuspectingly, and then started back with a horrible spasm of disgust. Involuntarily now he raised his head and looked at her. Her eyes were open, staring at the ceiling. His fancy seemed to read in them the lingering horrors through which she had passed. He shuddered, thanked God that the child had died. The hereditary poison must have lurked in its young veins.

To shake off these thoughts he rose, stirred the fire into a blaze, and returned to his seat. Then, moved by compunction—for this was a visit of forgiveness—he stretched out his arm and smoothed the back of her hand. A look of gratefulness appeared on her face, and she closed her eyes again. Daniel’s heart softened a little towards her.

The minutes passed slowly. He grew restless, wished that the nurse or Emily would come and relieve him. A sick-room, where one has to sit perfectly still, is not the place for a man suffering from nervous excitement. His eyes fell again on the Bible. He had not seen his gift for years. There was a certain pathos in her desire to have it near her.

He took it up, undid the clasp, and looked at the fly-leaf. “To my dear wife.” He sighed. He had tried to delude himself in those days that he loved her. Could he ever write such an inscription again? He shook his head, as the ever-haunting face of the other woman came between his eyes and the leaf. He turned the pages. They fell open, naturally, where a letter had been placed. The back of the envelope was turned to him. He thought it was one of his own to his wife, and felt touched by the idea of her keeping it there. He took it up curiously, but as his glance fell on the address he started with great amazement. It was in Lady Phayre’s handwriting—bore only his name. It had been opened. He himself surely had never received such a letter. With heart furiously beating and trembling fingers, he drew out the enclosure.

“Go, my hero and leader of men, to your victory. And if you love me, come back to me for your reward—whatsoever your heart desireth.

“Rhodanthe.”

For a few moments he remained staring at the paper, unable to comprehend. Then the truth crashed down upon him—both the letter’s significance and the probable history of its miscarriage. His brain reeled. She loved him. The note of passion in the words drowned his senses like a great diapason. She loved him. But for this other woman she would be his. He rose from his chair, turning his back to his wife, and put his hand to his forehead. His instinct was to fly from her presence. The smouldering hatred had sprung into fierce flame. He made a few steps by the foot of the bed, then stopped and looked at her. Their eyes met. He saw that she had been following his movements from the time he had first opened the Bible. A wave of gathering madness clouded his brain, surged red before his eyes. Remaining sanity bade him rush from the room if she was to live. An explosion of his passion would kill her. But the expression of excitement and fear on her peaked, livid face read in his disordered brain as one of mocking triumph. It swept away the lingering self-control. He strode round to her side, lifted his arms above his head, clenching the letter and shaking with passion, let loose all the fury in his soul in a low, hoarse cry.

Lizzie rose to a sitting posture, gazed at him for a moment, an awful terror in her eyes, and then, with a gasp, fell back on her pillow—dead.

How long he stood there, as if petrified, he never knew. When he recovered reason he wiped the great drops of perspiration from his forehead, thrust the letter into his pocket, and rushed from the room.

“Emily! Nurse!” he shouted from the top of the landing; and when they appeared hurriedly from the dining-room, “Come up at once: I think Lizzie is dead.”

The women ran up the stairs.

“Go to her. I will fetch Dr. Carson,” he cried, brushing past them.

He caught up a hat from the hall, and in another moment was out of doors. This pretext for absence and solitude was an inspiration. She was dead. He was free. He had killed her. He did not notice that an icy, heavy rain was sweeping the streets. He had killed her for Rhodanthe. Rhodanthe was his: he had bought her with his soul. He bit his lips to prevent himself from crying aloud. The rare passers-by turned round scared at his wild face and furious gait.

The calm of the doctor’s waiting-room was a check, and allowed him to concentrate his scattered faculties. When the medical man appeared, alert and matter of fact, he was master of himself. He explained his errand. He had been sitting with his wife, had idly reached for her Bible by the bedside. She had sprang up to prevent him. The exertion had killed her. He had looked through the Bible, found a letter written to him which she had guarded through jealousy. The explanation was simple and satisfactory, yet he felt deadly faint.

“You are upset,” said Dr. Carson, who had known him for several years. “You have been burning the candle at both ends lately. Drink this while I go and put on my coat.” He poured him out a glass of brandy, which he took from a cupboard. Goddard gulped it down neat. The spirit saved him from the threatening collapse and braced his nerves.

He accompanied the doctor to his own house in silence, left him at the dining-room door to go upstairs to the bedroom, and entering, sat down to wait. When the doctor returned, it was with a great effort that Goddard compelled himself to look him in the eyes.

“I am afraid your wife is dead,” said the doctor gravely.

“And I am indirectly the cause,” said Goddard.

The other moved a deprecating hand. “Don’t let that add to your sadness. Any other chance accident might have done it. Besides, may I speak to you frankly?”

“By all means.”

“Then—if it will not pain you—it is better so.”

“Would she never have recovered?”

“Her health was shattered. In all probability she would have broken out again. She and you have been spared some years of certain misery.”

“Then I have done a good action from a philosophical point of view?” said Goddard, with a harsh laugh.

“If you put it that way, you have,” replied he doctor, somewhat stiffly.

“Look here, Carson,” cried Goddard excitedly. “I can’t tell you that I am grieved she had gone. Don’t expect me to play the hypocrite.”

“I expect nothing but the misfortune of having you upon my hands in a short time,” said the other.

“Then let me speak to you once and for all—as a medical man: I must speak to somebody. These last few weeks I have been in hell fire. I hated her. I wanted her to die. I used to wake up at nights wet through with sweat, through the terror of it. I have been to blame throughout from the first cursed day I married her. I didn’t love her; she didn’t care much for me. I had to go my way: she couldn’t follow me. How could she? She was left alone here all by herself—no company, no occupations—nothing. You know her history—her father. The drink was in her blood. I tried to save her—after my fashion. You, who have attended her for the last eight years, can bear me out. But we were strangers—not an impulse in common. Latterly—listen: I must tell some one once, or I shall go mad. I knew what a woman could be—what it was to want a woman passionately, madly. She came here one night, discovered I was married—saw my wife drunk in this room. Since then my wife has been like an incubus throttling me, dragging me down to damnation. And I wanted her to die. In that room upstairs, an hour ago, when I kissed her and forgave her, I wanted her to die. When the moment came it was as though I had murdered her. Tell me, what am I to think? What am I to do?”

His features were working strangely, his brow damp with the black hair straggling across it. He looked at Carson with a searching appeal in his eyes. The latter took his hand, felt his pulse.

“What you are to do,” he said, “is to go to bed at once and sleep. I’ll send you round a draught. What you are to think, when you wake up, is that you are not responsible for her death—that she might have died at any moment, that it is better to die than to live a life of misery; that you are a free man, young, with all that makes life worth living in front of you. And lastly, if you like, that I have forgotten all you have told me. Now, go to bed and stay there.”

“Impossible,” cried Goddard. “The election.”

“Damn the election!” said the doctor.

“I must go back to-day.”

“And——?”

“I’ll make the arrangements,” replied Goddard with a shiver. “To-day is Tuesday. It will be for Friday. The poll will be declared at latest on Thursday morning. I must be there. Man alive!” he cried, with a queer tremor in his voice. “I cannot stay in this house! It would drive me mad. To sit here doing nothing—nothing—only thinking. I must go back. It will occupy my mind. There are two women in this house—the dead one who is living, and the living one who is dead—has been dead to me. If ever action and stimulus have been necessary to me, they are imperative now. I must do it, man, I tell you—I must do it.”

He began to walk about the room in a state of restless excitement, now and then moistening his lips with his tongue, and passing his hand through his hair. Dr. Carson reasoned with him. He was a young man, and felt himself powerless before Goddard’s stronger personality. By virtue of mere professional prestige you cannot force a man to follow your prescriptions. Goddard impetuously swept aside his arguments. At last he stopped short, as if struck by a sudden inspiration.

“I tell you what, Carson, I’ll promise to start at once for the south of France, as soon as this miserable business is over, and not do a stroke of work for a month.”

“That’s the only sensible thing you have said to-day,” returned the other, more cheerily. “You’d better let me see you again before you go.”

They parted. Goddard stumbled heavily upstairs to his own room, threw himself on the bed, and lay there, holding his burning head in his hands.

And Emily sat in the death-chamber and cried, the only soul on the wide earth who had love for the poor, wrecked creature that was dead, for Sophie, her sister, had never had a word of good to say on Lizzie’s behalf. She alone knew and pitied the miserable tragedy of that poor, futile life.