Page:Temple Bailey--The Gay cockade.djvu/104

 Her husband reached her first. "My dear," he said, "you heard?"

"Yes. Do you mean that I am—going to die, Ridgeley?"

There was, of course, no way out of it. "It means, my dear, that I've got to take awfully good care of you. Your heart is bad."

Christopher interposed. "People live for years with a heart like that."

But her eyes sought her husband's. "How long do they live?"

"Many months—perhaps years—without excitement"

This then had been the reason for his tenderness. He had known that she was going to die, and was sorry. But for ten years she had wanted what he might have given her—what he couldn't give her now—life as she had dreamed of it.

She drew a quivering breath—"It isn't quite fair—is it?"

It didn't seem fair. The two doctors had faced much unfairness of the kind of which she complained. But it was the first time that, for either of them, it had come so close.

They had little comfort to give her, although they attempted certain platitudes, and presently Ridgeley carried her to her room. 98