it on the library table. We want to pay all the bills."

"And give Allison as much money as we spent on the automobile and for the suits and everything, and pay for fixing up his car," interrupted Juliet.

"We want to do everything," Romeo said, with marked emphasis.

"Everything," echoed Juliet.

"That's very nice of you," answered Madame, kindly, "and we all appreciate it."

The stem young faces of the twins relaxed ever so little. It was a great relief to discover that they were not objects of scorn and loathing, for they had brooded over the accident until they had become morbid.

"Did you say that you had been living upon mush and milk ever since?" asked Madame.

"Ever since," they answered, together.

"I'm sure that's long enough," she said. "I wouldn't do it any longer. Won't you stay to dinner with us?"

With one accord the twins rose, impelled by a single impulse toward departure.

"We couldn't," said Romeo.

"We mustn't," explained Juliet. Then, with belated courtesy, she added: "Thank you, just the same."

They made their adieux awkwardly and went home, greatly eased in mind. As they trudged along the dusty road, they occasionally sighed in relief, but said little until they reached their ancestral abode, dogless now save for the pups gambolling about the doorstep and Minerva watching them with maternal pride.

"She said we'd lived on mush and milk long enough," said Romeo, pensively.

"We might fry the mush," Juliet suggested.

"And have butter and maple syrup on it?"

"Maybe."

"And drink the milk, and have bread, too?"

"I guess so."

"And jam?"

"Not while we're in mourning," said Juliet, firmly. "We can have syrup on our bread."

"That's just as good."

"If you think so, you ought not to have it."

"We've got to feed ourselves, or we'll die," he objected vigorously, "and if we're dead, we won't be any good to him or to anybody else, and we can't ever repent any more."

"I'm not so sure about that." said Juliet, with sinister emphasis.

"Nothing will happen to us that we don't deserve," Romeo assured her, "so come on and let's have jam. If it makes us sick, it's wrong, and if it doesn't, it's all right."

The following day, they voluntarily returned to their mush and milk, for they had eaten too much jam, and, having been very ill in the night, considered it sufficient evidence that their penance was not yet over.

XVIII

"LESS THAN THE DUST"

The heat of August shimmered over the land, and still, to every inquiry at the door or telephone, the quiet young woman in blue and white said: "No change." Allison was listless and apathetic, yet comparatively free from pain.

Life, for him, had ebbed back to the point where the tide must either cease or turn. He knew neither hunger nor thirst nor weariness; only the great pause of soul and body, the sense of the ultimate goal.

One by one, he meditated upon the things he used to care for. Isabel came first, but her youth and beauty had ceased to trouble or to beckon. His father had gone on ahead. The delusion still persisted, but he spoke of it no more. Even the violin did not matter now. He remembered the endless hours he had spent at work, almost every day of his life for years, and to what end? In an instant, it had been rendered empty, purposeless, and vain--like life itself.

Occasionally a new man came to look at his hand; not from the city now, but from towns farther inland. The examinations were painful, of course, but he made no objections. After the man had gone, he could count the slow, distinct pulsations that marked the ebbing of the pain, but never troubled himself to ask either the doctor or the nurse what the new man had said about it. He no longer cared.

Aunt Francesca had not come--nor Rose. Perhaps they were dead, also. He asked the nurse one sultry afternoon if they were dead.

"No," she assured him; "nobody is dead."

He wondered, fretfully, why she should take the trouble to lie to him so persistently upon this one point. Then a cunning scheme came into his mind. It presented itself mechanically to him as a trap for the nurse. If they were dead, she could not produce them instantly alive, as a conjurer takes animals from an apparently empty box. If he demanded that she should bring them to him, or even one, it would prove his point and let her see that he knew how she was trying to deceive him.

"Have they gone away?" he inquired.

"No, they're still there."

"Then," said Allison, with the air of one scoring a fine point, "will you ask-well--ask Miss Bernard to come over and see me?"

Remembering the other woman who had come in response to his request, and the disastrous effect the visit had had upon her patient she hesitated. "I'm afraid you're not strong enough," she said kindly. "Can't you wait a little longer?"

"There," he cried. "I knew they were dead!"

As she happened to be both wise and kind, the young woman hesitated no longer. "If I brought you a note from her you would believe me, wouldn't you?"

"No," he replied, stubbornly.

"Isn't there any way you would know, without seeing her?"

He considered for a few moments. "I'd know if I heard her play," he said at length. "There's no one who could play just the way she does."

"Suppose I ask her to come over sometimes and play the piano downstairs for a few minutes at a time, very softly. Would you like that?"

"Yes--that is, I don't mind." He was sure, now, that his trap was in working order, for no one could deceive him at the piano--he would recognise Rose at the first chord.

"Excuse me just a minute, please." She returned presently with the news that Rose would come as soon as she could. "Can't you go to sleep now?" she suggested.

Allison smiled ironically. How transparent she was!

She wanted him to go to sleep and when he awoke, she would tell him that Rose had been there, and had played, and had just gone.

"No," he answered, "I don't want to go to sleep. I want to hear Rose play."

So he waited, persistently wide awake. Sharpened by illness and pain, his hearing was phenomenally acute; so much so that even a whisper in the next room was distinctly audible. He heard the distant rumble of wheels, approaching steadily, and wondered why the house did not tremble when the carriage stopped. He heard the lower door open softly, then close, a quick, light step in the living room, the old-fashioned piano stool whirling on its rusty axis, then a few slow, deep chords prefacing a familiar bit of Chopin.

He turned to the nurse, who sat in her low rocking-chair at the window. "I beg your pardon. I thought you were not telling me the truth."

The young woman only smiled in answer. "Listen!"

From downstairs the music came softly. Rose was playing with the exquisite taste and feeling that characterised everything she did. She purposely avoided the extremes of despair and joy, keeping to the safe middle-ground. Living waters murmured through the melody, the sea surged and crooned, flying clouds went through blue, sunny spaces, and birds sang, ever with an unfailing uplift, as of many wings.

Allison's calmness insensibly changed, not in degree, but in quality, as the piano magically brought before him green distances lying fair beneath the warm sun, clover-scented meadows and blossoming boughs. "Life," he said to himself; "life more abundant."

She drifted from one thing to another, playing snatches of old songs, woven together by modulations of her own making. At last she paused to think of something else, but her fingers remembered, and began, almost of their own accord:

[Illustration: musical notation.]

Allison stirred restlessly, as he recalled how he had heard it before. He saw the drifted petals of fallen roses, the moon-shadow on the dial,