at once gentle and virile in his character which she admired and leaned upon; in his presence the small housekeeping troubles always slipped from her; but her heart, to use a pretty French phrase, had not consciously spoken,—­possibly it had murmured a little, incoherently, to itself, but it had not spoken out aloud, as perhaps it would have done long ago if an impediment had been placed in the way of their intimacy.  With all her subtler intuitions, Margaret was as far as Richard from suspecting the strength and direction of the current with which they were drifting.  Freedom, habit, and the nature of their environment conspired to prolong this mutual lack of perception.  The hour had sounded, however, when these two were to see each other in a different light.

One Monday morning in March, at the close of the three years in question, as Richard mouinted the outside staircase leading to his studio in the extension, the servant-maid beckoned to him from the kitchen window.

Margaret had failed to come to the studio the previous Saturday afternoon.  Richard had worked at cross-purposes and returned to his boarding-house vaguely dissatisfied, as always happened to him on those rare occasions when she missed the appointment; but he had thought little of the circumstance.  Nor had he been disturbed on Sunday at seeing the Slocum pew vacant during both services.  The heavy snow-storm which had begun the night before accounted for at least Margaret’s absence.

“Mr. Slocum told me to tell you that he shouldn’t be in the yard to-day,” said the girl.  “Miss Margaret is very ill.”

“Ill!” Richard repeated, and the smile with which he had leaned over the rail towards the window went out instantly on his lip.

“Dr. Weld was up with her until five o’clock this morning,” said the girl, fingering the corner of her apron.  “She’s that low.”

“What is the matter?”

“It’s a fever.”

“What kind of fever?”

“I don’t mind me what the doctor called it.  He thinks it come from something wrong with the drains.”

“He didn’t say typhoid?”

“Yes, that’s the name of it.”

Richard ascended the stairs with a slow step, and a moment afterwards stood stupidly in the middle of the workshop.  “Margaret is going to die,” he said to himself, giving voice to the dark foreboding that had instantly seized upon him, and in a swift vision he saw the end of all that simple, fortunate existence which he had lived without once reflecting it could ever end.  He mechanically picked up a tool from the table, and laid it down again.  Then he seated himself on the low bench between the windows.  It was Margaret’s favorite place; it was not four days since she sat there reading to him.  Already it appeared long ago,—­years and years ago.  He could hardly remember when he did not have this heavy weight on his heart.  His life of yesterday abruptly presented itself to him as a reminiscence; he saw now how happy that life had been, and how lightly he had accepted it.  It took to itself all that precious quality of things irrevocably lost.