I put my hand on his shoulder, and replied: "You will never be better unless you get rid of your worry." He drew in a sharp breath, and said: "I know that.

I am afraid I shall never be better." There was a silence in which we looked at each other steadily, and then he added, with an intense but quiet misery: "Never--never!" At that he moved his hand across his forehead wearily, rose, and turned toward the door.

He swayed as he did so, and would have fallen, but I caught him as he lost consciousness, and laid him on the cabin sofa.
I chafed his hands, unloosed his collar, and opened the bosom of his shirt.

As the linen dropped away from his throat, a small portrait on ivory was exposed on his breast.

I did not look closely at it then, but it struck me that the woman's head in the portrait was familiar, though the artistic work was not recent, and the fashion of the hair was of years before.