despairing misery. As I approached he staggered to his feet. He took my
hand in a shrinking, shamefaced way, and could not raise his eyes. I
uttered a few words of encouragement, but they had the opposite effect to
that designed.

'Don't tell me that,' he moaned, half resentfully. 'She's dying--she's
dying--say what they will, I know it.'

'Have you a good doctor?'

'I think so--but it's too late--it's too late.'

As he dropped to his chair again I sat down by him. The silence of a minute
or two was broken by a thunderous rat-tat at the house-door. Christopherson
leapt to his feet, rushed from the room; I, half fearing that he had gone
mad, followed to the head of the stairs.

In a moment he came up again, limp and wretched as before.

'It was the postman,' he muttered. 'I am expecting a letter.'

Conversation seeming impossible, I shaped a phrase preliminary to
withdrawal; but Christopherson would not let me go.

'I should like to tell you,' he began, looking at me like a dog under
punishment, 'that I have done all I could. As soon as my wife fell ill, and
when I saw--I had only begun to think of it in that way--how she felt the
disappointment, I went at once to Mrs. Keeting's house to tell her that I
would sell the books. But she was out of town. I wrote to her--I said I
regretted my folly--I entreated her to forgive me and to renew her kind