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‘Your nephew and I have talked about it,’ I said. ‘He thinks that Mr. Christopherson didn’t understand what a sacrifice he asked his wife to make.’

‘I think so too,’ was the reply. ‘But he begins to see it now, I can tell you. He says nothing but.’

There was a tap at the door, and a hurried tremulous voice begged the landlady to go upstairs.

‘What is it, sir?’ she asked.

‘I’m afraid she’s worse,’ said Christopherson, turning his haggard face to me with startled recognition. ‘Do come up at once, please.’

Without a word to me he disappeared with the landlady. I could not go away; for some ten minutes I fidgeted about the little room, listening to every sound in the house. Then came a footfall on the stairs, and the landlady rejoined me.

‘It’s nothing,’ she said. ‘I almost think she might drop off to sleep, if she’s left quiet. He worries her, poor man, sitting there and asking her every two minutes how she feels. I’ve persuaded him to go to his room, and I think it might do him good if you went and had a bit o’ talk with him.’

I mounted at once to the second-floor sitting-room, and found Christopherson sunk upon a chair, his head falling forwards, the image of despairing misery. As I approached he staggered to his feet. He took my hand in a shrinking, shamefaced way, and could not raise his eyes. I uttered a few words of encouragement, but they had the opposite effect to that designed.

‘Don’t tell me that,’ he moaned, half resentfully. ‘She’s dying–she’s dying–say what they will, I know it.’

‘Have you a good doctor?’

‘I think so–but it’s too late–it’s too late.’

As he dropped to his chair again I sat down by him. The silence of a minute or two was broken by a thunderous rat-tat at the house-door. Christopherson leapt to his feet, rushed from the room; I, half fearing that he had gone mad, followed to the head of the stairs.

In a moment he came up again, limp and wretched as before.

‘It was the postman,’ he muttered. ‘I am expecting a letter.’

Conversation seeming impossible, I shaped a phrase preliminary to withdrawal; but Christopherson would not let me go.

‘I should like to tell you,’ he began, looking at me like a dog under punishment, ‘that I have done all I could. As soon as my wife fell ill, and when I saw–I had only begun to think of it in that way–how she felt the disappointment, I went at once to Mrs. Keeting’s house to tell her that I would sell the books. But she was out of town. I wrote to her–I said I regretted my folly–I entreated her to forgive me and to renew her kind offer. There has been plenty of time for a reply, but she doesn’t answer.’

He had in his hand what I saw was a bookseller’s catalogue, just delivered by the postman. Mechanically he tore off the wrapper and even glanced over the first page. Then, as if conscience stabbed him, he flung the thing violently away.

‘The chance has gone!’ he exclaimed, taking a hurried step or two along the little strip of floor left free by the mountain of books. ‘Of course she said she would rather stay in London! Of course she said what she knew would please me! When–when did she ever say anything else! And I was cruel enough–base enough–to let her make the sacrifice!’ He waved his arms frantically. ‘Didn’t I know what it cost her? Couldn’t I see in her face how her heart leapt at the hope of going to live in the country! I knew what she was suffering; I knew it, I tell you! And, like a selfish coward, I let her suffer–I let her drop down and die–die!’

‘Any hour,’ I said, ‘may bring you the reply from Mrs. Keeting. Of course it will be favourable, and the good news–‘