“Oh, I am selfish—­cruel—­heartless!” sobbed Phyllis.  “I thought of myself, not of her.  He is hers; he will be given back to her as she prayed—­she prayed so to me before you appeared at the door, papa.  ’Give him back to me!  Give him back to me!’ that was her prayer.”

“My dearest child, you must not talk that way,” said the father.  “Come, Phyllis, your strength has been overtaxed.  You must go to bed and try to sleep.”

She still moaned about her cruelty—­her selfishness, until the doctor who had been sent for and had been with Ella in her room, appeared in order to let them know that Mrs. Linton had regained consciousness.  The blow had, of course, been a terrible one:  but she was young, and Nature would soon reassert herself, he declared, whatever he meant by that.  He thought it strange, he said, that Mrs. Linton had not been aware of her husband’s weakness.  To him, the physician, the condition of the unfortunate gentleman had been apparent from the first moment he had seen him.  He had expected to hear of his death any day.  He concluded by advising Phyllis to go to bed and have as long a sleep as possible.  He would return in the morning and see if Mrs. Linton might travel to London.

Phyllis went to her room, and her father went to the one which had been prepared for him.  For a minute or two he remained thoughtful.  What could his daughter have meant by those self-accusations?  After a short time, however, he smiled.  The poor thing had been upset by the shocking news of the death of the husband of her dearest friend.  She was sympathetic to quite a phenomenal degree.  That sympathy which felt her friend’s loss as though it were wholly her own was certainly not to be met with every day.

In the morning Phyllis showed traces of having spent a bad night.  But she spoke rationally and not in the wild way in which she had spoken before retiring, and her father felt that there was no need for him to be uneasy in regard to her condition.  He allowed her to go to the side of her friend, Ella, and as he was leaving them together in each other’s arms, he heard Ella say: 

“Ah, Phyllis, I know it now.  He was the man who had all my love—­all—­all!  Ah, if God would only give me another chance—­one more chance!”

Mr. Ayrton had heard that passionate appeal for another chance upon more than one previous occasion.  He had heard the husband who had tortured his wife to death make a passionate appeal to God to give him another chance.  He knew that God had never given him another chance with the same wife; but God had given him another wife in the course of time—­a wife who was not made on the spiritual lines of those who die by torture; a wife who was able to formulate a list of her own rights, and the rights of her sisters, and who possessed a Will.

The man who wanted another chance had no chance with such a woman.

He had heard the wife, who had deserted her husband in favor of the teetotal platform, cry out for another chance, when her husband had died away from her.  But God had compassion upon the husband.  She did not get him back.