The Flaw in the Crystal

meal. He watched the door close on her and said, "Won't that woman wonder what I come for?"

"She can see what you come for." She smiled. "Why are you spoiling it with thinking things?"

"It's for you I think them. I don't mind. It doesn't matter so much for me. But I want you to be safe."

"Oh, I'm safe, my dear," she answered.

"You were. And you would be still, if these Powells hadn't found you out."

He meditated.

"What do you suppose they've come for?" he asked.

"They've come, I imagine, for his health."

"What? To a god-forsaken place like this?"

"They know what it's done for me. So they think, poor darlings, perhaps it may do something--even yet--for him."

"What's the matter with him?"

"Something dreadful. And they say--incurable."

"It isn't----?" He paused.

"I can't tell you what it is. It isn't anything you'd think it was. It isn't anything bodily."

"I never knew it."

"You're not suppo