We walked home in silence.  A few steps from our house we met Dr. Willis walking very rapidly.  He did not recognize us at first.  When he did, he half stopped as if about to speak, then suddenly changed his mind, and merely bowing, passed on.  A bright light was burning in Ellen’s room.

“Why, Ellen has not gone to bed!” exclaimed John.

“Perhaps some one called,” said I, guiltily.

“Oh, I dare say,” replied he; “perhaps the doctor has been there.  But it is half-past twelve,” added he, pulling out his watch as we entered the hall.  “He could not have stayed until this time.”

I went to my own room immediately.  In a few moments I heard John come up, say a few words to Ellen, and then go down-stairs, calling back, as he left her room,—­

“Don’t keep awake for me, wifie, I have a huge batch of letters to answer.  I shall not get through before three o’clock.”

I crept noiselessly to Ellen’s room.  It was dark.  She had extinguished the gas as soon as she had heard us enter the house!  I knew by the first sound of her voice that she had been weeping violently and long.  I said,—­

“Ellen, I must come in and have a talk with you.”

“Not to-night, dear.  To-morrow I will talk over everything.  All is settled.  Good-night.  Don’t urge me to-night, Sally.  I can’t bear any more.”

It is strange—­it is marvellous what power there is in words to mean more than words.  I knew as soon as Ellen had said, “Not to-night, dear,” that she divined all I wanted to say, that she knew all I knew, and that the final moment, the crisis, had come.  Whatever she might have to tell me in the morning, I should not be surprised.  I did not sleep.  All night I tossed wearily, trying to conjecture what Ellen would do, trying to imagine what I should do in her place.

At breakfast Ellen seemed better than she had seemed for weeks.  Her eyes were bright and her cheeks pink; but there was an ineffable, almost solemn tenderness in her manner to John, which was pathetic.  Again the suspicion crossed my mind that she knew that she must die.  He too was disturbed by it; he looked at her constantly with a lingering gaze as if trying to read her face; and when he bade us good-by to go to the office, he kissed her over and over as I had not seen him kiss her for months.  The tears came into her eyes, and she threw both arms around his neck for a second,—­a very rare thing for her to do in the presence of others.

“Why, wifie,” he said, “you musn’t make it too hard for a fellow to get off!—­Doesn’t she look well this morning, Sally?” turning to me.  “I was thinking last night that I must take her to the mountains as soon as it was warm enough.  But such cheeks as these don’t need it.”  And he took her face in his two hands with a caress full of tenderness, and sprang down the steps.

Just at this moment Mrs. Long’s carriage came driving swiftly around the corner, and the driver stopped suddenly at sight of John.