“Then you did not want me to die?” He said this with a yearning look, raising himself again on his elbow to meet her eyes more straightly.

“Want you to die?” she repeated in astonishment.  “Why should I want you to die?  I want you to get well and live.”

He took her hand again.  “God bless you!” he said, and turned his face to the pillow to conceal that he was weeping.

Again that gray look of remembrance, passed over her face.  She knew now what he had meant.  “No,” she said slowly, “I do not want you to die.  You are good, and would harm no one.”

After this visit Leam saw Alick whenever she called at the house, which, however, was not so often as heretofore, and week by week became still more seldom.  Something was growing up in her heart against him that made his presence a discomfort.  It was not fear nor moral dislike, but it was a personal distaste that threatened to become unconquerable.  She hated to be with him; hated to see his face looking at her with such yearning tenderness as abashed her somehow and made her lower her eyes; hated his endeavors to convert her to an orthodox acceptance of mysteries she could not understand and of explanations she could not believe; hated his sadness, hated his joy:  she only wished that he would go away and leave her alone.  What did he mean?  What did he want?  He was changing from the blushing, awkward, subservient dog of his early youth, and from the still subservient if also more argumentative pastor of these later days alike, and she did not like the new Alick who was gradually creeping into the place of the old.

When Mrs. Corfield spoke of taking him to the sea for change of air, her heart bounded as if a weight had been suddenly removed, and she said, “Yes, he ought to go,” so warmly that the mother was surprised, wondering if she cared so much for him that the idea of his getting good elated her beyond herself and made her forget her usual reserve.  She instinctively contrived not to see him alone now when she went to Steel’s Corner during his tedious convalescence, for the poor fellow mended but slowly, if surely.  Either she had only a short time to stay, and so stood for a moment, making serious talk impossible, or she took little Fina with her, or maybe she entangled Mrs. Corfield in the conversation so that she should not leave them alone, the vague fear and distaste possessing her making her strangely rusee and on the alert.  But one day she was caught.  It had to come, and it was only a question of time.  She knew that, as we know when our doom is upon us.

Leam had not intended to go in to-day, but Alick, who was in the garden rejoicing in the warmth and freshness of this tender April noontide, came to meet her at the second gate, and asked her to come and sit with him on the garden-seat, there where the budding lilacs began to show their bloom, and there where they sat on that fatal day when she had hidden the little phial in her hair and bade him tell her of flowers till she tired.