“Are you very certain of this thing, Doctor, and is it to come to me soon?”

“That last we can not tell, dear friend.  You may be with us years yet, and it may be swift and sudden.  I think it is worse than mistaken kindness, it is foolish wickedness, to treat a Christian woman like a little child.  I wanted to tell you before the shock would be dangerous to you.”

“I understand.”  When she spoke again it was in a more hesitating tone.  “Does Dr. Douglass agree with you?” And the quick, pained way in which the Doctor answered showed her that he understood.

“Dr. Douglass will not let himself believe it.”

Then a long silence fell between them.  The Doctor kept his position, leaning against the mantel, but never for a moment allowed his eyes to turn away from that motionless figure before him.  Only the loving, pitying Savior knew what was passing in that young heart.

At last she arose and came toward the Doctor, with a strange sweetness playing about her mouth, and a strange calm in her voice.

“Dr. Van Anden, I am so much obliged to you.  Don’t be afraid to leave me now.  I think I need to be quite alone.”

And the Doctor, feeling that all words were vain and useless, silently bowed, and softly let himself out of the room.

The first thing upon which Ester’s eye alighted when she turned again to the table was the letter in which she had been writing those last words:  “Why life isn’t half long enough for the things that I want to do.”  Very quietly she picked up the letter and committed it to the glowing coals upon the grate.  Her mood had changed.  By degrees, very quietly and very gradually, as such bitter things do creep in upon a family, it grew to be an acknowledged fact that Ester was an invalid.  Little by little her circle of duties narrowed, one by one her various plans were silently given up, the dear mother first, and then Sadie, and finally the children, grew into the habit of watching her footsteps, and saving her from the stairs, from the lifting, from every possible burden.  Once in a long while, and then, as the weeks passed, more frequently, there would come a day in which she did not get down further than the little sitting-room, but was established amid pillows on the couch, “enjoying poor health,” as she playfully phrased it.

So softly and silently and surely the shadow crept and crept, until when June brought roses and Abbie.  Ester received her in her own room, propped up among the pillows in her bed.  Gradually they grew accustomed to that also, as God in his infinite mercy has planned that human hearts shall grow used to the inevitable.  They even told each other hopefully that the warm weather was what depressed her so much, and as the summer heat cooled into autumn she would grow stronger.  And she had bright days in which she really seemed to grow strong, and which deceived every body save Dr. Van Anden and herself.