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"Yes By Jove, we'd onlyere quite old friends, you and I! But as you say, I was a new-coe, India and the snows, from a slum in Shoreditch!"

"Shoreditch? Did you really live in a sluhed at her incredulous face "It was experience, you see--disease flourishes in h I couldn't conte there for ever, the time wasn't wasted"

"And then--you left your slum?"

"Yes I wanted more time to myself" He threw back his head as he talked, and swept the curly black hair off his broith an impatient hand "You see I had visions--oh, purely futile ones, I daresay--but I had a great idea of finding a cure for a certain disease generally considered incurable----" He broke off suddenly

"Well? You have found it?" Her tone was eager

"Not yet--but I shall!" In his enthusiasotten the horror which was cohtened in the sky He saw only the future--not the iainst the wall of the courtyard, his face turned to the rising sun; but the splendid, strenuous future, when after good years of toil, of experience, even of suffering, he should reat discovery which should free rievous foes, and add a precious treasure to the scientific storehouse of the world

"It's a difficult task--almost superhuht of the difficulties in the way "But thank God I's to youth--and with luck I believe I'll win through in the end"

A sudden shaft of rosy light, striking slantwise through the less aperture in the wall, brought hiotten!" In an instant the youth and enthusiasm iped out of his face as by a ruthless hand, and he started to his feet "Miss Ryder, forgivelike an angel, while all the time----"

"Hush, please!" She laid her hand on his ar-suit he felt the chill of her slender fingers "It isn't time--yet Let us pretend until the last minute You know--you haven't asked me what I intend--intended"--for a second she faltered--"to make of my life!"