“I insisted,” she said quietly, and he guessed that the doctor was not to be blamed.

“But,” he went on, “it couldn’t have happened except through an injury.  You’ve had no injury that I can think of—­”

“No, of course I haven’t,” she said rapidly.  “But these things seem to happen without cause, don’t they?  Anyway, we won’t believe it until we’ve got to.  I’ve been ill for months, and noticed things.  I’ve been an awful fool.  But I didn’t think it was dangerous, and—­I don’t think I’d have cared much if I had known.”

The next day confirmed the first doctor’s opinion.  Marcella was a little incredulous.  It did not seem to her that she was ill enough to be in danger.  It was only when the doctors advised immediate operation that the horror and terror of it came flooding in upon her.

“Louis, we’ll tell them what we think about it to-morrow, please,” she said.

They went back to Mrs. King’s almost in silence.  Both of them seemed as creatures walking in a dream.  With one accord they looked at each other when they got back in the room.  Mrs. King, anxious-eyed, was talking to someone in the kitchen.  To avoid having to talk to her they went up on the roof.  The city rumbled beneath their feet, very, very much alive.  Everything seemed to be blatantly alive, flaunting its bounding life at them.  They sat down on the coping.

Without warning she clung to him and began to cry.

“Louis—­please don’t let me be chopped up,” she sobbed.  He held her as though he would snatch her out of life and pain and danger.  But he did not know what to say.

“Louis, I hate my body to push itself into notice like this,” she cried after awhile.  “I always did—­as a child, and when Andrew was coming, I hated you to see me—­like that—­Oh and Louis, I can’t die—­yet—­”

“My darling, you’re cracking me up!” he cried.  “But don’t think of dying.  Surgeons don’t let people die nowadays!  You can’t die.  You’re too much alive.  You’d fight any illness—­”

They sat trying to think some alleviation into their misery.  Presently she snatched herself away from him.

“It’s such a beastly, slinking sort of way to die!  In a bed—­sick and ill!  Why can’t they have wars—­so that I could die quick on a battlefield?  You wouldn’t have time to be getting cold beforehand, then.  Louis, it’s like father, lying in bed till his poor heart was drowned.  Louis—­Oh—­”

She stopped, breathless.  Her eyes narrowed; she was thinking deep down.

“I wonder if it’s—­necessary?”

He shook himself impatiently.

“How can pain and illness ever be necessary?”

“They may be—­perhaps not to the sufferer, you know,” she said, and would not explain what she meant.  She was seeing pictures of herself praying for weakness—­and of burning Feet—­

“I wish Andrew had come with us.  Is there time to send for him?” she said presently.