“If ever I do, I’ll get it for myself,” he answered.  “And when you’re old, I’ll drive you about, very likely.”

He left her placidly, and it was understood that in a month he would return to her as soon as she had determined on their immediate future.

For herself she knew that it would be necessary to deceive him, yet feared to attempt it after the recent conversation.  She felt uneasily proud of him.

CHAPTER XVIII

SWAN SONG

The doctor said Mr. Churchouse was dying because he didn’t wish to go on living, and when Estelle taxed the old man with his indifference, he would not deny it.

“I have lived long enough,” he said.  “The machine is worn out.  My thinking is become a painful effort.  I forget the simplest matters, and before you are a nuisance to yourself, you may feel very certain you have long been a nuisance to other people.”

He had for some months grown physically weaker, and both Raymond and others had noticed an inconsequence of utterance and an inability to concentrate the mind.  He liked friends to come and see him and would listen with obvious effort to follow any argument, or grasp any fresh item of news.  But he spoke less and less.  Nor could Sabina tempt him to eat adequate food.  He ignored the doctor’s drugs and seemed to shrink physically as well as mentally.

“I’m turning into my chrysalis,” he said once to Estelle.  “One has to go through that phase before one can be a butterfly.  Remember, my pretty girl, you are only burying an empty chrysalis when this broken thing is put into the ground.”

“You’re very unkind to talk so,” she declared.  “You might go on living if you liked, and you ought to try—­for the sake of those who love you.”

But he shook his head.

“One doesn’t control these things.  You know I’ve always told you that the length of the thread is no part of our business, but only the spinning.  I should have liked to see you married; yet, after all, why not?  I may be there.  I shall hope to beg a holiday on that occasion and be in church.”

He always spoke thus quite seriously.  Death he regarded as no discontinuity, or destruction, of life, but merely an alteration of environment.

At some personal cost Miss Ironsyde came to take leave of him, when it seemed that his end was near.  He kept his bed now, and by conserving his strength gained a little activity of mind.

He was troubled for Jenny’s physical sufferings; while she, for her part, endeavoured to discuss Sabina’s problems, but she could not interest the old man in them.

“Abel is safe with his father,” said Mr. Churchouse.  “As for Sabina, I have left her a competency, and so have you.  One has been very heartily sorry for her.  She will have no anxiety when my will is read.  I am leaving you three books, Jenny.  I will leave you more if you like.  My library as a whole is bequeathed to Estelle Waldron, since I know nobody who values and respects books so well.”