Jack Raymond

There was no tremor in Jack's voice. "Then you think she will suffer very much?" he asked. The professor hesitated.

"It depends... Perhaps not so much as in many cases, if it goes quickly; but cancer is always cancer, and it may..."

He stopped, with a sense of wonder at the stolid face. "Is that callousness," he asked himself, "or self-control?" Then he saw the little sweat beads break out on Jack's forehead, and thought: "Poor lad!"

The next week brought Theo, like em­bodied sunshine; a creature ignorant of death and grief. Helen had written to him at Paris, telling him that she had been ill and was "not quite strong enough to get about"; so he was prepared to be met at the station by Jack only, and to find her on the sofa when they reached the house. He came in with his unshadowed face, his violin, his aureole of yellow curls; and knelt down to hug and kiss her rapturously and to litter the sofa with the presents he had brought.

"Why, mummy, what do you mean by fall­ing ill the minute we go away? Is it to pro­vide Jack with an opportunity to try his hand at doctoring? That's carrying maternal de­votion a bit too far. And to grow so thin, too! You must hurry up and get well before the bright weather goes; we want to take you boating, you know. Wait, I've got something outside that 'll make you well to look at."

He ran out into the passage, then came back with a huge sheaf of white A

"Did you ever see such glorious ones? I stopped at Havre on the way, and the peasants were bringing them in to market for the Mado

"And carried that load all the way from Havre? And the violin too?"

"Well, mummy, people carry lilies and musical instruments in heaven, don't they? And the water was like heaven to-day, with white sea-birds instead of seraphim, and shiny fishes wriggling and jumping for sheer delight, like the souls of the good people after they die. Why, Jack, how seedy you look! Too much dissecting, is it?"

Jack was standing still, looking out into the blossoming garden, and wondering how much more of this a man could bear. He turned with his wooden face.

"Oh, I'm all right, thanks. Don't you think the lilies should go in water?"

"Yes; they'll want a big bath-tub, won't they? Mummy, you look sweeter than ever; you ought always to be half buried in lilies."

As he stooped to lift them Helen caught his arm and drew him down beside her, rest­ing her cheek against his.

"Kochanku moj!" Her eyes shone with a light which only Theo's presence waked in them; her voice had a deeper tone in her native speech. And Jack, the outsider, looked on without bitterness or jealousy, but with an aching heart. He had grown accustomed to this, years ago; yet the pain of it was always new. It was a thing inevitable, that must be accepted and endured in silence. To the end his uttermost devotion would be a lesser joy to her than the touch of this bright creature's wings; yet he was loved as much as any one could ever be who was not Theo and not of Polish blood. "She sees Poland in him," he thought once more; "and he cares as much for Poland as I for El Dorado."

Theo ran off laughing, his arms full of lilies, and the black kitten, dusted from ear to tail with golden pollen, purring on his shoulder. The door closed behind him, and the light faded out of Helen's eyes.

"Jack, how can we ever tell him? It is sacrilege to throw a cloud on him; he is Baldur the Beautiful."

Jack was stooping to smooth her pillow and gather up the fallen lily petals. He spoke with his face turned away.

"You had better let me tell him, mother; it may be less of a shock to him that way, and Professor Brooks wants you kept quiet."

There was a kind of struggle in her face... "No, dear!" she said at latst. "We will neither of us tell him. Let him have this one summer without a cloud. Remember, he comes out next autumn, and it might shake his nerves and spoil his playing; and the first concerts mean so much. There's no reason why he should know; I... I don't have the pain very often yet; and he goes back to Germany in September; he won't find out before then..."

Jack stooped down and kissed her gravely. "As you like, mother. It shall be our secret, yours and mine."

CHAPTER X

So the holiday-time passed, and Theo suspected nothing. His mother's weakness and inability to take the pleasure trips he had pla

"I think I like your imitations best, dear," she would answer cheerfully, and hold Jack's hand a little tighter.

For them it was a hard summer; at times, indeed, so hard that Jack's courage would have failed him but for the indomitable patience of hers. The disease had not yet reached its most painful stage; but there were already many long, sleepless nights, when Jack would sit with her, reading aloud or, if she was too ill for that, watching beside her silently. Often she entreated him to leave her and go back to bed. "I shall be quite comfortable," she would say, secretly dreading the lonely horror of the night, yet fearing lest the want of sleep should injure his health.

"Let me have all I can of you, mother," he would answer softly; and she would submit with a little sigh of relief.

Day would come at last, and with it Theo, light-footed and radiant, carrying dewy trails of honeysuckle to wreathe the foot of her bed. "Have you had a good night, mummy?" Sometimes he would notice Jack's haggard face. "You work too hard, old fellow," he would say. Once he came up behind him in the garden and slipped a hand through his arm; a wonderful hand, strong and slender, with the live finger-tips of the musician. "Jack," he said, "I've been worrying about you. I believe you have some trouble."

Jack paused a moment, then looked up with his grave smile. "A love trouble, do you think? My dear boy, I'm just an ordinary cart-horse; I can't get out of my harness to fall in love like you artists. By the way, what's become of the girl you wrote that song for last summer?"

Theo's tendency to fall in love was a stand­ing joke in the household. A less adoring mother than Helen might have grown a little impatient of his raptures over now one girl and now another whom he had sat beside at a concert or seen passing in the street. He would find resemblances to the Libyan sybil, or the Mado