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 elling through some broken and unbeautiful country roughly parallel with the course of his own. "But need there be an operation?" she thought aloud. "Are they ever any good?"

"I could die," he admitted bitterly, and repented as he spoke.

There had been times, he remembered, when she had said and done sweet and gallant things, poor soul! poor broken companion! And now she had fallen into a darkness far greater than his. He had feared that he had hurt her, and then when he saw that she was not hurt, and that she scrutinised his face eagerly as if she weighed the sincerity of his words, his sense of utter loneliness was completed.

Over his mean drama of pain and debasement in its close atmosphere buzzing with flies, it was as if some gigantic and remorseless being watched him as a man of science might hover over some experiment, and marked his life and all his world. "You are alone," this brooding witness counselled, "you are utterly alone. Curse God and die."

It seemed a long time before Mr. Huss answered this imagined voice, and when he answered it he spoke as if he addressed his wife alone.

"No," he said with a sudden decisiveness. "No. I will face that operation We are ill and our hearts are faint. Neither for you, dear, nor for me must our story finish in this fashion. No. I shall go on to the end."

"And have your operation here?"

"In this house. It is by far the most convenient place, as things are."