They sent my mother to Davos Platz--there seemed hope for her--and she died away from us all; and one of my sisters died at Mentone too.

But I do not intend to follow their example;" and then he had risen from his chair and put an end to the interview.
Nothing would induce him to go abroad.

Even when Elizabeth promised that she and Dinah would go too, his resolution to remain in England had been unshaken.
"Why should I let them sacrifice themselves for me ?" he said to his father.

"Am I not bringing trouble enough on Elizabeth?
Why did I ever speak to her?
I was mad to let her engage herself to me--I might have known how it would be!" And that day David's despondency was very great.
But at other times he made heroic efforts to hide his deep inward sadness from Elizabeth.

He was so young, and the love of life was so strong within him, and the thought of disease and death so terrible.
Sometimes in the dark hours of the winter's night, when his racking cough would not let him sleep, he wrestled with his despair as Christian wrestled with Apollyon.
"A soldier who refuses wounds and death," he would say to himself--"a minister of Christ who fears to tread in his Master's footsteps, what is he but a coward and deserter--and I am both!" And then the torrent of his human passion would sweep over his soul--his love for Elizabeth, the knowledge that but for this hereditary malady he would have had the blessed certainty of calling her wife! What a noble life they two would have lived! What plans of unselfishness they had formed! How the treasures of their happiness would have overflowed and fertilised other and more barren lives! And now not life but death claimed him! Ah, no wonder if his human weakness blenched at the prospect, if his heart at times quailed and grew sick within him; for when one is young and happy it is not easy to die, and fuller life, not rest, is the thing desired.
But there were times when his fears seemed lulled and tranquillised, and when, with the strange hopefulness that was a feature of his disease, he would even delude himself with the idea that the doctors were wrong, and that he would surely get better.
These intervals of comparative brightness would come to him when the sun shone, or his nights had been less suffering, or when Elizabeth was with him.