“We’ll talk of that in your consulting-room,” said the strange doctor.

Then, telling me to lie quiet and they would come back presently, he went downstairs and Martin’s father followed him.

Nurse came up while they were away (she had taken possession of me during the last few days), and I asked her who were in the parlour-kitchen.

“Only Father Donovan and Mrs. Conrad—­and baby,” she told me.

Then the doctors came back—­the consultant first, trying to look cheerful, and the old doctor last, with a slow step and his head down, as if he had been a prisoner coming back to court to receive sentence.

“My lady,” said the strange doctor, “you are a brave woman if ever there was one, so we have decided to tell you the truth about your condition.”

And then he told me.

I was not afraid.  I will not say that I was not sorry.  I could have wished to live a little longer—­especially now when (but for the Commandment of God) love and happiness seemed to be within my grasp.

But oh, the relief!  There was something sacred in it, something supernatural.  It was as if God Himself had come down to me in the bewildering maze that was haunted by the footsteps of my fate and led me out of it.

Yet why these poor weak words?  They can mean so little to anybody except a woman who has been what I was, and she can have no need of them.

All fear had vanished from my thoughts.  I had no fear for myself, I remembered, and none for baby.  The only regret I felt was for Martin—­he loved me so; there had never been any other woman in the world for him.

After a moment I thanked the doctors and hoped I had not given them too much trouble.  Doctor Conrad seemed crushed into stupefaction and said nothing; but the strange doctor tried to comfort me by saying there would be no pain, and that my malady was of a kind that would probably make no outward manifestation.

Being a woman to the end I was very glad of that, and then I asked him if it would last long.  He said No, not long, he feared, although everything was in God’s hands and nobody could say certainly.

I was saying I was glad of that too, when my quick ears caught a sound of crying.  It was Christian Ann, and Father Dan was hushing her.  I knew what was happening—­the good souls were listening at the bottom of the stairs.

My first impulse was to send nurse to say they were not to cry.  Then I had half a mind to laugh, so that they might hear me and know that what I was going through was nothing.  But finally I bethought me of Martin, and asked that they might both be brought up, for I had something to say to them.

After a moment they came into the room, Christian Ann in her simple pure dress, and Father Dan in his shabby sack coat, both looking very sorrowful, the sweet old children.

Then (my two dear friends standing together at the foot of the bed) I told them what the doctor had said, and warned them that they were to tell nobody else—­nobody whatever, especially Martin.