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 "Yes, I wonder you didn't cable."

"I am sorry; I was incapable of anything. My resource was—sapped."

He looked at her keenly; it was a doctor's look.

"What have you been doing since?" he asked (as the medical man, to whom no ground was sacred). "What are you going to do?"

"I was writing letters, shutting up the house. And here I'm trying to realise that there's nothing more to do, that matters. And afterwards"

"Well?"

"I don't know," she said wearily; "I'd rather not, please Afterwards will come of itself."

He smiled as now he took upon himself the brother-in-law, the nice, kind, doggy person. "You should have somebody with you, Ellaline. You should, you owe it to yourself, you owe it to—"—he realised there was no one else to whom she owed it—"to yourself," he repeated. "You must think, you must be wise for yourself now."

She looked, half-smiling, at him while he