"I have enjoyed my call so much, Mr. Williams, I am coming again soon, if you will allow me."
"You are very kind, Mrs. Everleigh, and I assure you it will give me great pleasure to have you do so," he replied, with all the old-time courtesy of the once elegant John Hungerford.
"And I will send my car around for you as soon as you feel strong enough for a drive," the lady continued brightly. "You need to get out into this crisp fall air, and before long you will feel like a new man; the world will seem like a different place to you."
John's face fell suddenly. Until this moment he had not once thought of himself since her coming.
"I fear that will never be," he said, in a spiritless tone. "There are strong indications that before very long I may be in a different world from this."
"Who has dared to pass such sentence upon you, Mr. Williams?" gravely questioned his companion. "Put that thought away from you at once; it is your rightful heritage to be a strong, well man, and—you still have work to do here." Then she smiled cheerily into his face as she held out her hand to take leave of him, adding: "But we will talk more of that when I come again." And she went away, leaving John with a sense of something new having been born into his consciousness.
He walked to a window, and stood looking thoughtfully out over the roofs and chimney pots, while a voice within him, that seemed almost audible, repeated over and over: "It is your rightful heritage to be a strong, well man; and you still have work to do here."
That same evening, the duties of the day being over, Helen went in to see him again, and to inform him that she had received a second letter from his uncle, Mr. Young, who had sent her another check for fifty dollars, which she laid before him as she spoke.
He pushed it almost rudely from him.
"Keep it," he said, flushing sensitively; "I cannot take it."