thought you might try to cure me."

She had seated herself, but he remained standing.

What a handsome woman she had become, he was thinking, and how
expensively dressed! There was something strange in the very
familiarity of the countenance presented to him. It had altered much
from what he remembered it, but curiously enough he remembered it the
more vividly because of that very alteration.

"What is your trouble?" he asked huskily--"Why have you
consulted--me?"

"It is my lungs. I don't know--let us call it a whim. I thought you
would do me good if anyone could." She paused a second: "You used to
be my husband once."

"Once! Well, I am willing to be your doctor."

"I suppose you would do your best for a dog if it were dying,
wouldn't you? though you might not care if it recovered."

"I have a very faithful dog," he said significantly.

Bella winced.

"Dogs ask so little for their love. Oh, I didn't come here without a
struggle. And I knew you would speak like this. But I have been
abroad so long, and on the voyage home I got worse, and women--women
of your sort who had taken no notice of me, suddenly grew kind. I