We worked hard over the last of the proofs, and I suppose I was tired at the end of them, for when Martin carried me upstairs to-night there was less laughter than usual, and I thought he looked serious as he set me down by the bed.

I bantered him about that ("A penny for your thoughts, mister"), but towards midnight the truth flashed upon me—­I am becoming thinner and therefore lighter every day, and he is beginning to notice it.

Moral—­I must try to walk upstairs in future.

* * * * *

JULY 30.  Ah, me! it looks as if it were going to be a race between me and the Expedition—­which shall come off first—­and sometimes I am afraid I am going to be the loser!

Martin ought to sail on the sixteenth—­only seventeen days!  I am expected to be married on the tenth—­only eleven!  Oh, Mary O’Neill, what a strange contradictory war you are waging!  Look straight before you, dear, and don’t be afraid.

I had a letter from the Reverend Mother this evening.  She is crossing from Ireland to-morrow, which is earlier than she intended, so I suppose Father Dan must have sent for her.

I do hope Martin and she will get on comfortably together.  A struggle between my religion and my love would he more than I could bear now.

* * * * *

JULY 31.  When I awoke this morning very late (I had slept after daybreak) I was thinking of the Reverend Mother, but lo! who should come into the room but the doctor from Blackwater!

He was very nice; said I had promised to let him see me again, so he had taken me at my word.

I watched him closely while he examined me, and I could see that he was utterly astonished—­couldn’t understand how I came to be alive—­and said he would never again deny the truth of the old saying about dying of a broken heart, because I was clearly living by virtue of a whole one.

I made pretence of wanting something in order to get nurse out of the room, and then reached lip to the strange doctor and whispered “When?”

He wasn’t for telling me, talked about the miraculous power of God which no science could reckon with, but at last I got a word out of him which made me happy, or at least content.

Perhaps it’s sad, but many things look brighter that are far more sorrowful—­dying of a broken heart, for example, and (whatever else is amiss with me) mine is not broken, but healed, gloriously healed, after its bruises, so thank God for that, anyway!

* * * * *

Just had some heavenly sleep and such a sweet dream!  I thought my darling mother came to me.  “You’re cold, my child,” she said, and then covered me up in the bedclothes.  I talked about leaving my baby, and she said she had had to do the same—­leaving me.  “That’s what we mothers come to—­so many of us—­but heaven is over all,” she whispered.