A day or two later she sought a private interview with her friend, and whispered, “Roger, dear Roger, if you do not fail me now you will prove yourself the best and bravest man in the world.  I am going to repose a trust in you that I cannot share at present with any one else—­not even my mother.  It would only make her unhappy now that she is reviving in our brighter days.  It might have a bad influence on papa, and it is our duty to shield him in every way.”

She told him everything, made him read the copy of her letter to Arnold.  “You are strong, Roger,” she said in conclusion, “and it would kill him, and—­and I love him.  You know now how it has all come about, and it does not seem in my nature to change.  I have given you all I can—­my absolute trust and confidence.  I’ve shown you my whole heart.  Roger, you won’t fail me.  I love you so dearly, I feel so deeply for you, I am so very grateful, that I believe it would kill me if this should harm you.”

He did not fail her, but even she never guessed the effort he made.

“It’s all right, Millie,” he said with a deep breath, “and I’ll be a jolly bachelor for you all my life.”

“You must not say that,” she protested.  “One of these days I’ll pick you out a far better wife than I could ever be.”

“No,” he replied decisively, “that’s the one thing I won’t do for you, if you picked out twenty score.”

He tried to be brave—­he was brave; but for weeks thereafter traces of suffering on his face cut her to the heart, and she suffered with him as only a nature like hers was capable of doing.  Events were near which would tax his friendship to the utmost.

August was passing with its intense heat.  The streets of the locality wherein the Jocelyns lived were shamefully neglected, and the sewerage was bad.  Mr. Jocelyn was one of the first to suffer, and one day he was so ill from malarial neuralgia that he faltered in the duties of his business.

“I can’t afford to be ill,” he said to himself.  “A slight dose of morphia will carry me through the day; surely I’ve strength of mind sufficient to take it once or twice as a medicine, and then plenty of quinine will ward off a fever, and I can go on with my work without any break or loss; meanwhile I’ll look for rooms in a healthier locality.”

His conscience smote him, warned him, and yet it did not seem possible that he could not take a little as a remedy, as did other people.  With the fatuity of a self-indulgent nature he remembered its immediate relief from pain, and forgot the anguish it had caused.  He no more proposed to renew the habit than to destroy his life—­he only proposed to tide himself over an emergency.