She looked at him in a blind sort of way. His words made only a hazy impression; but neither of the men could know that.

“Believed in me?” she echoed, smiling faintly. “Why, did you?”

“Yes,” said Francis with a concentrated fury that reached even her confused senses. “But I never will again! I thought I was beginning to think you were the sort of woman you said. But you’re just a flirt. Any man is better than the one you’re married to.”

“I I think you want me to go,” she said, trying to see him. She could see two Francises, as a matter of fact, neither of them clearly.

“Yes, I do. Either of these men you’ve befooled can see you on your way. And I’ll start divorce proceedings, or you may, immediately.”

He said more than that; but that was all she could get. The words hurt her, in spite of their lack of meaning. Francis hated her; he thought she was a bad girl, who never kept her word. And she wasn’t.

“I I want to be good,” she said aimlessly, as she had said to Pennington a little earlier. “I” she lost the thread again “I’ll go.”

She rose, dropping the cup and saucer on her knee, and not stopping to pick them up. She caught hold of the doorpost to carry her in, and dropped down on a seat inside. It was not that she was weak, but she felt giddy. She wondered again if it was the swamp. Probably. She finally made her way back to her own room, mixed herself some spirits of ammonia and took it, and sat down to pull herself together. Through the wooden partition she could hear the furious voices of the men on the porch outside. She wondered if Francis would say more dreadful things to her while he took her over in the side-car. She hoped not.

Presently the dizziness departed for a few minutes, and she tried to pack. She did not seem able to manage it. If she was allowed to stay at the Lodge with the O’Maras, she could send Peggy over to gather up her things. Yes, that would be the best way to do.

She pinned on her hat and drew her cloak around her, just as she was, and came out. Pennington and Francis were standing up, facing her, and having a quarrel which might last some time.

“I’m ready,” she said weakly.

She knew she should have stood up there, and told Francis how unkind and unjust and bad-tempered and jealous he was, and defend herself from his accusations. But she was too tired to do it; and besides, words seemed so far away, and feelings seemed far away, too. Francis and the work at the cabin and Pennington, with his kind, plump, rueful face, and even the O’Maras and Logan, seemed suddenly unreal and of little account. The only thing that really mattered was a chance to go somewhere and lie down and sleep. Perhaps she could lean back a little in the side-car as he took her over.

Francis broke off short in what he was saying, and went without looking at her toward the place where he kept his motor-cycle. Perhaps he thought that it did not matter, now, whether he left her with Pennington or not.

Pennington, for his part, turned around he had been standing so that his back was toward her and began to speak. Marjorie thought he was saying something to the effect that he was very sorry that he had made this trouble for her, and that he had been trying to explain; and thought he could make Francis hear reason when he had cooled off.

“It doesn’t really matter,” she said wearily. “Only tell him to hurry, because I’m so sleepy.”

She sank into the chair where she had been sitting before Francis appeared, and leaned back and shut her eyes. Pennington, with a concerned look on his face, came nearer her at that, and looked down at her, reaching down to feel her pulse. She moved her hand feebly away.

“Francis wouldn’t like it,” she said; and that was the last thing she remembered distinctly, though afterwards when she tried she seemed to recall hearing Pennington, very far off in the distance, calling peremptorily, “Ellison! Ellison! Come here at once!”

She wondered faintly why Pennington should want to hurry him up. It was about this time that she quietly slipped sidewise from her chair, and was in a little heap on the veranda before he could turn and catch her, or Francis could respond to the summons.

“This is what you’ve done,” was what Pennington said quietly when Francis reappeared. He did not offer to touch Marjorie or pick her up.

Francis flung himself down on his knees beside his wife. Then he looked up at Pennington, with a last shade of suspicion in his eyes.

“What do you think it is?” he asked. “Is she really fainting?”

“You young fool, no!” said Pennington. “She’s ill.”

“Ill!” said Francis, and gathered her up and laid her on the settee at the other end of the porch. “What’s the matter, do you think? Is it serious?”

His words were quiet enough, but there was a note of anguish in his voice which made Pennington sorry for him in spite of himself. But he did not show much mercy.

“It is probably overwork,” he said. “We’ve all done what we could to spare her, but a child like this shouldn’t be put at drudgery, even to satisfy the most jealous or selfish man. You’ve had a china cup, my lad, and you’ve used it as if it was tin. And it’s broken, that’s all.”

Francis looked down at Marjorie, holding her head in his arms. It lay back limply. Her eyes were half open, and her heart, as he put his hand over it, was galloping. Her cheeks were beginning to be scarlet, and her hand, when he reached down and touched it, burned. He looked up at Pennington with an unconscious appeal, unmindful of the older man’s harsh words.

“Do you think she’ll die?” he asked.

“I have no way of knowing. If she does, you have the consolation of knowing that you’ve done what you could toward it.”

“Oh, my God, don’t, Pennington!” cried out Francis, clutching Marjorie tighter unconsciously. “It’s as true as gospel. But let up now. Get somebody. Do something, for heaven’s sake! You know about medicine a little, don’t you?”

“Take her inside and put her to bed,” Pennington commanded shortly. “I’ll take your motor-cycle and go for Mother O’Mara. I can get a doctor from there by to-morrow, perhaps.”

Francis gathered the limp little body up again without a word. Only he turned at the door for a last appeal.

“Can’t you tell at all what it is?”

“Fever, I think. She’s caught malarial fever, perhaps. She wouldn’t have done if she’d been stronger. Take her in.”

So Francis carried his wife over the threshold, into the little brown room he had decked for her so long ago, and laid her down again. Her head fell back on the pillow, and her hands lay as he dropped them. He stood back and looked at her, a double terror in his heart. She would never love him again. How could she? And she would die surely she would die, and he had killed her.

“I’m going,” she said very faintly, as a sleep-talker speaks. She was not conscious of what she said, but it was the last straw for Francis. He had not slept nor eaten lately, and he had worked double time all day to keep his mind from the state of things, ever since he had brought her back. So perhaps it was not altogether inexcusable that he flung himself on the floor by the bedside and broke down.

He was aroused after awhile by the touch of Marjorie’s hand. He lifted his head, thinking she had come to and touched him knowingly. But he saw that it was only that she was tossing a little, with the restlessness of the fever, and his heart went down again.

He pulled himself up from the bedside, and went doggedly at his work of undressing her and putting her to bed.

She was as easy to handle as a child; and once or twice, when he had to lift or turn her in the process of undressing, he could feel how light she was, and that she was thinner. She had always been a little thing, but the long weeks of work had made her almost too thin not too thin for her own tastes, because, like all the rest of the women of the present, she liked it; but thin enough to give Francis a fresh pang of remorse. He felt like a slave-driver.

When he had finished his task, he stood back, and wondered if there was anything else he could do before Pennington came back with Mrs. O’Mara, and with or without a doctor. He felt helpless, and as if he had to stand there and watch her die. He got water and tried to make her drink it ineffectually he filled a hot water bottle and brought it in, and then thought better of it. She had a fever already. Then he thought of bathing her in cold water; but he could not bring himself to do that. He had already done enough that she would hate him for, in the way of undressing her. He must never tell her he had done that. . . . But she would hate him anyway. So he ended by sitting miserably down on the floor beside her, and waiting the interminable hours that the time seemed until the others returned.

He had expected Mrs. O’Mara to reproach him, as Pennington had, as being the person to blame for Marjorie’s state. But the dear soul, comforting as always, said nothing of the sort. She said very little of any sort, indeed; she merely laid off the bonnet and cloak she had come in, and went straight at her work of looking after Marjorie. Only on her way she stopped to give Francis a comforting pat on the shoulder.

“It’s not so bad but it might be worse,” she said. “Anybody might git them fevers without a stroke of work done. An’ she’s young an’ strong.”

Francis looked up at her in mute gratitude from where he sat.

“An’ now clear out, lie down and rest, down on the couch or annywhere ye like, till I see what’s to be done to this girl,” she went on.

He went out without a word, and sat down on the window-seat, where the banjo lay, still, and picked it up mechanically. He could see Marjorie, now, with it in her hands, singing to it for the men or, sometimes, just for him. How gay she had been through everything, and how plucky, and how sweet! And just because she was gay he had thought she was selfish and fickle, and didn’t care. And because she had never said anything about how hard the work was, he had thought he could forgive himself even less for this that it wasn’t hard. Looking back, he could see not one excuse for himself except in his carrying her off. That might have worked all right, if he could have kept his temper. He let his mind stray back over what might have been; suppose he had accepted Logan’s following her up here as just what it was the whim of a man in love with Marjorie. Suppose he had believed that Pennington could kiss his wife’s hand without meaning any harm; suppose, in fine, that he had believed in Marjorie’s desire and intention to do right, even if she had been a coward for a few minutes to begin with?

Then why, then

By this time, perhaps, he could have won her back. If he had not laid down the law to her if he had not put her to the test. What business had a man in love to make terms, anyhow? It was for him to accept what terms Marjorie had chosen to make for him.

He flung himself down on his knees by the window-seat, heedless of any one who might come or go.

“Oh, God,” prayed Francis passionately, as he did everything. “Give me another chance! Let her get well, and give me one little chance then to have her forgive me! I don’t care what else happens if that only does!”

He did not know how long he knelt there, praying with such intensity that he sprang aside when some one touched him on the shoulder.

“She’s goin’ to be all right in the long run,” said Mrs. O’Mara. “I gev’ her a wee drink o’ water, an’ she kem to herself fur a minute. An’ I says, ‘Me dear, where did ye git yer fever?’ An’ she says, ’The swamp, I think. Don’t I have to travel to-day? I’m in bed.’ An’ I says, ‘Not to-day nor anny day till ye want, me child,’ and she turns over an’ snuggles down like a lamb. An’ I’ve sponged her off with cool water, an’ she feels better, though she’s off agin, an’ I’m afraid the fever’ll be runnin’ up on us before the doctor can git here.”

“You mean she isn’t sensible now?” demanded Francis, whose eyes had lighted up with hope when she began to speak.

“Well, not so’s ye could talk to her. An’ ye might excite her. Them they loves does often.”

“Then I wouldn’t,” said Francis recklessly. “Oh, Mother O’Mara, I’ve been such a brute ”

“Hush, hush now, don’t ye be tellin’ me. Sure we’re all brutes wanst in awhile. Ye feel that way because the child’s sick. Now go out and watch fer the doctor, or do annything else that’ll amuse ye.”

He obeyed her as if he were a little boy. He was so miserable that he would have done what any one told him just then if Logan, even, with his cane and his superciliousness, had given him a direction he would probably have obeyed it blindly.

Mrs. O’Mara went back to the sick-room. How much she knew of the situation she never told. But Peggy was not a secretive person, and Peggy had arrived at a point with Logan where he told her a good deal, if she coaxed. They never got it out of the old lady, at any rate.

Marjorie was quieter, but still not herself. Mrs. O’Mara, who was an experienced nurse, did not like the way she had collapsed so completely. She was afraid it was going to be a hard illness, and she knew Francis was breaking his heart over it.

“Still it may be a blessin’ in a way,” she said half aloud. “You never can tell in this world o’ grief and danger. I wonder has she people besides Mr. Francis. They’ve never either of them said.”

The doctor came and went, and Monday morning dawned, when Francis had to go to work whether or no. And Pennington quietly took over Marjorie’s duties again, and the men tiptoed up to the cabin where she lay, and asked about her anxiously, and young Peggy came over and took turns with her mother in the nursing, and Logan, much more robust and tanned than he had been in several years of New York life in heated apartments, came with her and sat on the porch waiting till she came out; and Francis saw him there, and thought nothing of it except that he was grateful to him for being interested in Marjorie.

He realized now that it was all he need ever have thought. But he realized so many things now, when it might be too late!

The days went on relentlessly. Finally they decided to send for her cousin, the only relative she had. Francis was a little doubtful as to the wisdom of this, for he knew that Marjorie had never been very happy with her cousin, but it was one of those things which seem to have to be done. And just as they had come to this resolution; a resolution which felt to Francis like giving up all hope, Marjorie took a little turn for the better.

It was not much to see. She was a little quieter, that was all, and the nursing did not have to be so intensive. Mrs. O’Mara and Peggy did not feel that they had to sit with her all the time; there were periods when she was left alone. Francis felt more bitterly than anything else that he had to go on with his work, instead of staying in the house every moment, but it was better for him. He would have driven the O’Maras mad, they told him frankly, walking up and down, looking repentant. Peggy was not quite softened to him yet; but the older woman was so sorry for him that any feelings she may have had about the way he had behaved were swallowed up in sympathy.

“And it isn’t as if he weren’t gettin’ his comeuppance, Peg,” she reminded her intolerant young daughter. “Sure annything he made her suffer he’s payin’ for twice over and again to that.”

“And a very good thing, too,” retorted Peggy, who was just coming off duty, and casting an eye toward the window to see where Logan was. He was exactly where she wished, waiting with what, for him, was eagerness, to go off through the woods with her.

“I suppose, now ye’ve a man trailin’ ye, there’s nothin’ ye don’t know,” said her mother. “And him a heretic, if not a heathen itself. I’ve only to say to ye, keep yer own steps clean, Peggy.”

“He is a heathen he doesn’t believe a blessed thing; he said so himself!” said Peggy with what sounded like triumph. “The more reason for me to convert him, poor dear! Empty things are easier filled than full ones. If he was like them in there, with a religion of his own, I wouldn’t have a show. But as it is, I have my hopes.”

“Oh, it’s converting him you are! Tell that to the pigs!” said her mother scornfully. “And now go on; I suppose you’re taking a prayer book and a rosary along with you in that picnic basket.”

“No,” said Peggy reluctantly. “I’m softening his heart first.”

She had the grace to giggle a little as she said it, and the O’Mara sense of humor rode triumphant over both of them then, and they parted, laughing. Francis, entering on one of his frequent flying trips from work to see how Marjorie was, felt as if they were heartless.

Mrs. O’Mara, at the sight of his tired, unhappy young face, sobered down with one of her quick Irish transitions.

“Ah, sure now it’s the best of news. The doctor’s been, and he says she’s better. So it won’t be necessary to send after the old aunt or cousin or whatever, that ye say she wasn’t crazy over. Come in an’ see her.”

Francis, a new hope in his heart, tiptoed into the little brown bedroom where Marjorie lay. It was too much to hope that she would know him. She had been either delirious or asleep under narcotics through the days of her fever. And once or twice when she had spoken rationally, it had never been Francis who had happened to be near at the time.

She lay quite quietly, with her eyes shut, and her long lashes trailing on her cheeks. When Francis came in she opened her eyes as if it was a trouble to make that much effort. She was very weak. But she looked at him intelligently, and even lifted one hand a little from the coverlet, as if she wanted to be polite and welcome him. He had been warned not to make any fuss or say anything exciting, if this should come; so he only sat down across from her and tried to speak naturally.

“Do you know me, Marjorie?” he asked, trying to make his voice sound as it always sounded. But it was a little hoarse.

She spoke, in a thread of a voice, that yet had a little mockery in it. She seemed to have taken things up where she dropped them.

“Yes, thank you. You’re my sort of husband. This this is really too bad of me, Francis. But, anyway, it was your swamp!”

Just the old, mocking, smiling Marjorie, or her shadow. But it did not make him angry now; it seemed so piteous that he should have brought her to this. The swamp faded to nothingness as a cause of her illness when he compared it to his own behavior.

“Marjorie,” he asked, very gently so as not to disturb her, “would it be too exciting if I talked to you a little bit about things, and told you how sorry I was?”

“Why no,” she said weakly, shutting her eyes.

“I was wrong, from start to finish,” he said impetuously. “I’m sorry. I want you to forgive me.”

“Why, certainly,” she said, so indifferently that his heart sank. It did not occur to him that he had never said that he cared for her at all.

“Is there anything I could get you?” he asked futilely as he felt.

“I’d like to see Mr. Pennington. He was kind to me.”

“Marjorie, Marjorie, won’t you ever forgive me for the way I acted?”

“Oh, yes,” she said, lying with shut eyes, so quiet that her lips scarcely moved when she talked. “I said so. But you haven’t been kind. It’s like don’t you know, when you get a little dog used to being struck it gets so it cowers when you speak to it, no matter if you aren’t going to strike it that time. I don’t want to be hurt any more. I don’t love Pennington he’s too funny-looking, and awfully old. But he was kind he never hurt my feelings. . . .”

She spoke without much inflection, and using as few words as she could. When she had finished she still lay there, as silent and out of Francis’s reach as if she were dead. He tiptoed out with a sick feeling that everything was over, which he had never had before. She was so remote. She cared so little about anything.

He went back to work, and told Pennington that Marjorie wanted to see him. When the day was over he returned to the cabin again, and found Mrs. O’Mara on duty once more. Pennington sat by Marjorie, holding her hand in his, and speaking to her occasionally. Francis looked at him, and spoke to him courteously. Pennington smiled at him, and stayed where he was. Marjorie, Mrs. O’Mara said, seemed to cling to him, and his presence did her good. And she broke it as gently as she could though the patient was on the road to getting well now, she was disturbed by his coming in and out. She seemed afraid of him.

Francis took it very quietly. After that he only came to the bedroom door to ask, and stepped as softly as he could, so that she would not even know he had been there. And time went on, and she got better, and presently could be dressed in soft, loose, fluffy things, and lie out on the veranda during the warmest part of the day, and see people for a little while each. It was about this time that Francis went to sleep at the bunk-house.

“Why doesn’t Francis ever come to see me?” she asked finally. “There are a great many things I want to know about.”

Pennington, whom she had asked, told her gently.

“We thought the physician thought that he upset you a little when you were beginning to be better. He is staying away on purpose. Would you like to see him?”

“Yes, I think I would,” she said. “Can Peggy come talk to me?”

Peggy could, of course. She came dashing up, from some sylvan nook where she had been secluded, presumably with Logan, fell on Marjorie with hearty good-will and many kisses, and demanded to know what she could do.

“I I want to see Francis and talk to him about a lot of things,” said Marjorie, “and I thought perhaps if you’d get me a mirror and a little bit of powder, and ”

“Say no more!” said Peggy. “I know what you want as well as if you’d told me all. I’ll be out in a minute with everything in the world.”

She returned with her arms full of toilet things, and for fifteen minutes helped Marjorie look pretty. She finished by brushing out her hair and arranging it loosely in curls, with a big ribbon securing it, like Mary Pickford or one of her rivals. She touched Marjorie’s face with a little perfume to flush it, and draped her picturesquely against the back of the long chair, with a silk shawl over her instead of the steamer rug which Mrs. O’Mara, less artistic than utilitarian, had provided.

“There,” she said, “you look like a doll, or an angel, or anything else out of a storybook. Now I’ll get Francis.”