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Any one seeing Leo Farrant high against
his pillows would have noted that he was
very handsome, very keen, and very ill.
His chestnut hair was dusted over with
silver; his lean brown face had paled lifelessly
in long confinement; he was wasted
with his malady. Yet none of the old
signs had gone; and, looking at him for
the first time, you could have guessed all
that he had been. His wife, tired though
she was, glowed to her finger-tips with the
sense of his rarity. It had been to keep
that sense undefiled that she had paid off
so munificently everything that could conceivably
constitute a claim on him; that
she now slaved over their mean little accounts
so that no one should ever have
to know how hard up Leo Farrant was.
When, after the accident, he had wondered,
before her, if there weren't something
he could "do," she had cried out
against the notion. He had done one thing
supremely well; if Heaven had taken away
his means of doing that, it wasn't his duty
to cast about for lesser ways of serving
Heaven. They had given up their house,
sold most of their possessions, and, after a
vain interval at a sanatorium, had come
to Mrs. Bleeker's to live in two rooms with
.an attic above them for storage. They
had been meek enough for righteousness;
she wasn't going to be meeker than that!
She had been rewarded by being able to
keep the sense of him as a creature afflicted
from without but unconsumed from
within. He was as magnificent as ever,
bar what the gods had done to him. No
one should remember him—she clutched
the determination to her heart afresh—
as anything but what he really was. He
Leda and the Swan 225
book and calculated. She hated to withdraw
one penny before interest-day. Not aware of what he was good for, and dis­
should go down grandly to the tomb,
that it mattered—the interest on that daining to try anything else.
dwindling principal; yet she had a superstition
to the effect that if she neglected tion for you, Leo. Can you spare me for
" I have to go out and get this prescrip­
one contrivance, one expedient, of poverty, twenty minutes? The bell is just by
disaster would somehow be justified. She your hand."
knew that nothing was more probable "Spare you? Yes, my dear, always, if
than disaster; but she didn't want to tax I have to." Then he looked at her—diffidently,
if a creature of his mold could
herself, in stricken future days, with having
lifted a finger to invite it. One superstition,
finally, got the better of the what's its name?—is very dear, isn't it? "
be diffident. "I say, Marie, that stuff—
other: she would let the druggist" charge" She smiled. " What in the world should
it, and after the 1st she would pay him. have set you to counting pence ? I count
She put up the cheque-book and went them; and you can count on me. We can
back to Leo.
afford anything you need. Certainly, if
we had got to the point where you couldn't
have medicines, I think you'd see it in my
face."
He smoothed the counterpane with his
deft fingers—fingers that had matched so
well, for beauty, the fingers they could
not match for skill. "Well, if you insist
on it, I think I do see it in your face.
The lines are as beautiful as ever, but—
you've aged. There are two gray hairs
over your right temple. I wish you'd give
me some notion of how much we have
left. His damned medicine won't do me
any good, you know."
"Did he tell you that?"
"The doctor? He never tells me anything,
of course. He's perfectly good
form."
"He told me it might help."
"In what sense?"
"My dear"—she looked him straight
in the eyes—"you know there's only one
sense I think of: the sense of making you
more comfortable."
"You mean there isn't any ultimate
hope?"
"What is the hope any living creature
has except the hope of being comfortable
a little longer instead of a little shorter
time?" She asked it very gravely; and
he was wise enough not to mistake it for
an evasion.
"You're a brick, Marie: I'll say that
for you, any day. Of course, we know,
both of us, that there isn't much hope. If
a miracle turns up, we'll meet it standing,
in perfectly good order. We won't crane
our necks for it, will we, any more than
we do for the other thing? But, all the
same, how much have we got?"