“These are the times I will remember,” said Jimmie; “when—­when I am alone.”

The last night they sat on the bench he took out his knife and carved the date—­July, 1913.

“What does that mean?” asked Jeanne.

“It means to-night I seem to love you more and need you more than ever before,” said Jimmie.  “That is what it means.  Will you remember?”

Jeanne was looking away from him, but she stretched out her hand and laid it upon his.

“To-morrow I am going to town,” said Jimmie, “to see that oculist from Paris.  They say what he tells you is the last word.  And, if he says—­”

Jeanne swung toward him and with all the jealousy of possession held his hand.  Her own eyes were blurred with tears.

“He will tell you the others are wrong!” she cried.  “I know he will.  He must!  You—­who have always been so kind!  God could not be so cruel!”

Jimmie stopped her.

“If I am not to see you—­”

During his last week at home Jimmie had invented a Doctor Picard, a distinguished French oculist, who, on a tour of the world, was by the rarest chance at that moment in New York.  According to Jimmie, all the other oculists had insisted he must consult Picard, and might consider what Picard said as final.  Picard was staying with a friend—­Jimmie did not say where—­and after receiving Jimmie was at once taking the train for San Francisco.  As Jimmie had arranged his scenario, it was Picard who was to deal him his death sentence.

Her husband seemed so entirely to depend on what Picard might say that Jeanne decided, should the verdict be unfavorable, she had best be at his side.  But, as this would have upset Jimmie’s plan, he argued against it.  Should the news be bad, he pointed out, for her to receive it in her own home would be much easier for both.  Jeanne felt she had been rebuffed, but that, if Jimmie did not want her with him, she no longer was in a position to insist.

So she contented herself with driving him to the train and, before those who knew them at the station, kissing him good-by.

Afterward, that she had done so comforted her greatly.

“I’ll be praying for you, Jimmie,” she whispered.  “And, as soon as you know, you’ll—­”

So upset was Jimmie by the kiss, and by the knowledge that he was saying farewell for the last time, that he nearly exposed his purpose.

“I want the last thing I say to you,” he stammered, “to be this:  that whatever you do will be right.  I love you so that I will understand.”

When he arrived in New York, in his own name, he booked a stateroom on the Ceramic.  She was listed to sail that evening after midnight.  It was because she departed at that hour that for a week Jimmie had fixed upon her as furnishing the scene of his exit.  During the day he told several of his friends that the report of the great oculist had been against him.  Later, they recalled that he talked wildly, that he was deeply despondent.  In the afternoon he sent a telegram to Jeanne: