"I cannot but suspect that your kind and generous heart may incline you—as soon as you receive this letter, and know that I am dying—to come out here at once, in order to bid a personal farewell to your friend.

"Do not do so. Do not leave England until you receive word of my death. I have a reason, which you will understand by and by, for laying special stress upon this request; in fact it is my last wish and command, my wife. (I have not had much opportunity for tyranny, have I?)

"How much your sympathy, and gay bright friendship, have meant to me, in this somewhat lonely life, no words can say.

"Just now I wrote of the time, so soon coming, when the nominal bond between us would be severed, leaving you completely free. You must not even feel yourself a widow, Diana; because you will not really be one. I have called you my 'wife,' I know; but it has just been a courtesy title. Has n't it?

"Yet—may I say it?—I trust and believe the very perfect friendship between us will be a lasting link, which even death cannot sever. And there is a yet closer bond: One Lord, one Faith, one Baptism. This is eternal.

"So—I say again as I said, with my hands on your bowed head, on that Christmas night so long ago, before we knew all that was to be between us:

"The Lord bless thee, and keep thee;
The Lord make His face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee;
The Lord lift up His countenance upon thee, and give thee peace."

"Good-bye, my wife.

"Yours ever,

"DAVID RIVERS."

Chapter XXXIII - Requiescat in Pace

*

Diana sat perfectly still, when she had finished reading David's letter.

A year ago she would have flung herself upon her knees, sobbing: "David, David!" But the time for weeping and calling him had long gone by. These deeper depths of anguish neither moaned nor cried out. They just silently turned her to stone.

Every vestige of colour had left her face, yet she did not know she was pale. She sat, looking straight before her, and—realising.

David was dying; and David did not want her.

David was dying in Central Africa; yet his last request was that she should stay in England, until she heard of his death.

Every now and then her lips moved. She was repeating, quietly: "The merely nominal bond which has bound us together." And then, with a ghastly face, and eyes which widened with anguish: "I have called you my 'wife,' I know; but it has just been a courtesy title. Hasn't it?"