a moment on the
girl was livid. The eyes shone with hate. "You--you beast!" she muttered
chokingly.

Esther turned a shade paler, but otherwise gave no sign that she had
heard. "Mother, just try, you are doing so well, so splendidly. The
doctor says ..."

"Be quiet--be quiet! I hate him. I won't try. I won't be tortured--oh,
why can't you all leave me alone!" She began to sob and moan under her
breath, careless even of a possible passerby. Fortunately there was no
one, and they were already within sight of home. Esther, very white,
supported the shaking woman with her arm and they hurried on together.
At the door she would still have accompanied her but Mary flung herself
angrily from her hold and ran up the stairs with sudden feverish
strength. Esther turned into the living room and dropped into the
nearest chair.

She was still sitting there without having removed either hat or gloves
when, a little later, Callandar entered.

"Well, nurse," with a faint smile, "how are things to-day?" His quick
eye had noticed in a moment the girl's closed eyes and listless
attitude, but nothing in his tone betrayed it.

"Very well, I think, until a little while ago. We were late in getting
home from the dressmaker's--"

"I see. You look rather done up. The fact is you are overdoing things.
Rather foolish, don't you think?"

"No," stubbornly. "I am all right."

"You are exhausted and there is no need. Things are going well. The dose
is steadily diminishing, more quickly than she suspects. It looks as if
we might begin to breathe again. It is a great gain to feel reasonably
sure that she has no more of the stuff hidden anywhere. If she had, she
would have used it during that last crisis."

The girl in the chair winced. She hated even to think of the night to
which his words referred. "Yes," she said, "but--but there won't be any
more times like that, will there?"

"Yes," grimly. "We are not through yet. But every crisis will be a
little easier--if things go as they are going."

Esther sighed. "It is very terrible, isn't it?" she said. "And really it
doesn't seem fair, for it wasn't her fault; in the beginning she didn't
know. And she does suffer so."

"We must not think of it in that way. It helps more to think of the
suffering she is escaping. What she is going through now is saving her,
body and soul. It is taking her out of torment and leading her back to
life, and sanity. You don't know, but I do, and any struggle,