“Dead?”

As Harry Garlett repeated the word his face became deeply, deeply troubled. “She seemed so well, for her, last evening,” he said slowly.

The doctor answered in a low voice: “You should have resisted her wish for those strawberries.”

Harry Garlett looked puzzled.

“I never gave her any strawberries, Maclean. There are no strawberries yet—it’s much too early.”

It was the doctor’s turn to be surprised.

“I understood from Miss Cheale that you had shown your wife a dish of forced strawberries brought her by Miss Prince, and that then she had insisted on having them before her supper.”

“I never saw any strawberries, and I was only with her for a very few minutes.”

“Then one of the maids must have given them to her,” observed the doctor. “But if it hadn’t been that dish of strawberries, it would have been something else. It’s clear from the state she was in that anything might have caused her death.”

40As if hardly knowing what he was doing, Harry Garlett sat down again.

40

“I—I can’t believe it,” he muttered.

“As far as the poor soul could be made happy, you made her happy, Garlett,” said Dr. Maclean feelingly.

“I wonder if I did—I wonder if I did! You must have often thought it strange that I was away so much, Maclean. But honestly—it was poor Emily’s own wish.”

He was speaking with deep emotion now, staring down at the floor.

“After I left the army, it took me some time to realize how really ailing she was, though, as you may remember, I did at that time stay at home a good deal. And then one day she sent me a note by hand to the factory——”

He looked up. “That note, Maclean, was my order of release! I have kept it, and I should like you to see it some day. In it she said that she wanted me to be happy—that Dodson was quite up to looking after the business, and that she did not want me ever to feel that I couldn’t do anything which would add to my 

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