"Yes, it is a book of books. I know it by heart."
"Then ye'll may be remaimber the writer's summing up of practical Chreestianity as a seestem of ethics which in its ultimate perfection will result in the happiness of the human race—even that last enemy, Death, if not subdued, may be made to keep his distance, seemply by a due observance of natural laws—by an unselfish forethought and regard in each member of the human species for the welfare of the multitude. The man who becomes the father of a race of puny children, can be no friend to humanity. He predooms future suffering to the innocent by a reckless indulgence of his own inclination in the present."
"Yes, I believe you are right," said Angus, with a despairing sigh. "It seems a hard thing for a man who loves, and is beloved by, the sweetest among women, to forego even a few brief years of perfect bliss, and go down lonely to the grave—to accept this doctrine of renunciation, and count himself as one dead in life. Yet a year ago I told myself pretty much what you have told me to-day. I was tempted from my resolve by a woman's loving devotion—and now—a crucial point has come—and I must decide whether to marry or not."
"If you love humanity better than you love yourself, ye'll die a bachelor," said the Scotchman, gravely, but with infinite pity in his shrewd old face; "ye've asked me for the truth, and I've geeven it ye. Truth is often hard."
Angus gave his thin hot hand to the doctor in token of friendly feeling, and then silently turned his face to the wall, whereupon the doctor gently patted him upon the shoulder and left him.
Yes, it was hard. In the bright spring time, his health wondrously restored by that quiet restful winter on the shores of the Mediterranean, Angus had almost believed that he had given his enemy the slip—that Death's dominion over him was henceforth to be no more than over the common ruck of humanity, who, knowing not when or how the fatal lot may fall from the urn, drop into a habit of considering themselves immortal, and death a calamity of which one reads in the newspapers with only a kindly interest in other people's mortality. All through the gay London season he had been so utterly happy, so wonderfully well, that the insidious disease, which had declared itself in the past by so many unmistakable symptoms, seemed to have relaxed its grip upon him. He began to have faith in an advanced medical science—the power to cure maladies hitherto considered incurable. That long interval of languid empty days and nights of placid sleep—the heavy sweetness of southern air breathing over fields of orange flowers and violets, February roses and carnations, had brought strength and healing. The foe had been baffled by the new care which his victim had taken of an existence that had suddenly become precious.
This was the hope that had buoyed up Angus Hamleigh's spirits all through the happy springtime and summer which he had spent in the company of his betrothed. He had seen the physician who less than a year before had pronounced his sentence of doom, and the famous physician, taking the thing in the light-hearted way of a man for whom humanity is a collection of "cases," was jocose and congratulatory, full of wonder at his patient's restoration, and taking credit to himself for having recommended Hyères. And now the enemy had him by the throat. The foe, no longer insidiously hinting at his deadly meaning, held him in the fierce grip of pain and fever. Such an attack as this, following upon one summer day's imprudence, showed but too plainly by how frail a tie he clung to life—how brief and how prone to malady must be the remnant of his days.
Before the post went out he re-read Christabel's letter, smiling mournfully as he read.
"Poor child!" he murmured to himself, "God bless her for her innocence—God bless her for her unselfish desire to do right. If she only knew the truth—but, better that she should be spared the knowledge of evil. What good end would it serve if I were to enter upon painful explanations?"
He had himself propped up with pillows, and wrote, in a hand which he strove to keep from shaking, the following lines:—