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 he’s only got a year to live, and nothing done—nothing done.”

“I won’t believe it,” she said. “You don’t look ill; you’re as lean as a greyhound, but”

“It may come any day now,” he went on quietly; “but I’ve done something. The book—it is great. They all say so; and I know it, too. But at first! Just think of gasping out your breath, and feeling that all the things you had seen and known and felt were wasted—lost—going out with you, and that you were going out like the flame of a candle, taking everything you might have done with you.”

“The book is great,” she said; “you have done something.”

“Yes. But for those two days I stayed in my rooms in St James’s Street, and I thought, and thought, and thought, and there was no one to care where I went or what I did, except a girl who was fond of me when she was little, and she had gone away and wasn’t fond of me any more. Oh, Sybil—I feel like a lunatic—I mean you, of course; but you never cared. And I went to a house agent’s and got the house unfurnished, and I bought the furniture—