Yours as ever,
S.

* * * * *

Tehran.  April.—­The days pass peacefully and even quickly, which is odd, for they are singularly idle.  I get up about 11 a.m., and am pretty tired when dressing is finished.  Then I sit in the garden and have my lunch there, and after lunch I lie down for an hour.  Presently tea comes; I watch the Neligans start for their ride, and already I wonder if I was ever strong and rode!

It is such an odd jump I have taken.  At home I drifted on, never feeling older, hardly counting birthdays—­always brisk, and getting through a heap of work—­beginning my day early and ending it late.  And now there is a great gulf dividing me from youth and old times, and it is filled with dead people whom I can’t forget.

In the matter of dying one doesn’t interfere with Providence, but it seems to me that now would be rather an appropriate time to depart.  I wish I could give my life for some boy who would like to live very much, and to whom all things are joyous.  But alas! one can’t swop lives like this—­at least, I don’t see the chance of doing so.

I should like to have “left the party”—­quitted the feast of life—­when all was gay and amusing.  I should have been sorry to come away, but it would have been far better than being left till all the lights are out.  I could have said truly to the Giver of the feast, “Thanks for an excellent time.”  But now so many of the guests have left, and the fires are going out, and I am tired.

END OF THE DIARY.

* * * * *

The rest of the story is soon told.

Miss Macnaughtan left Tehran about the middle of April.  The Persian hot weather was approaching, and it would have been impossible for her to travel any later in the season.  The long journey seemed a sufficiently hazardous undertaking for a person in her weak state of health, but in Dr. Neligan’s opinion she would have run an even greater risk by remaining in Persia during the hot weather.

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Dr. Neligan’s goodness and kindness to Miss Macnaughtan will always be remembered by her family, and he seems to have taken an enormous amount of trouble to make arrangements for her journey home.  He found an escort for her in the shape of an English missionary who was going to Petrograd, and gave her a pass which enabled her to travel as expeditiously as possible.  The authorities were not allowed to delay or hinder her.  She was much too ill to stop for anything, and drove night and day—­even through a cholera village—­to the shores of the Caspian Sea.

We know very few details concerning the journey home, and I think my aunt herself did not remember much about it.  One can hardly bear to think of the suffering it caused her.  A few incidents stood out in her memory from the indeterminate recollection of pain and discomfort in which most of the expedition was mercifully veiled, and we learnt them after she returned.