hile he was inwardly praying for
a half-dozen minutes alone with Margaret MacLean. He had passed her
more than once in the corridors, but she had eluded him each time,
brushing by him with a tightening of the lips and a little shake of the
head, half pleading, half commanding. At last, in grim despair, he
gave up appearances and patrolled the second-floor hall until the night
nurse fixed upon him such a greenly suspicious eye that he fled to his
quarters--vowing unspeakable things.

Even old Cassie, the scrub-woman, shared in the general misery--Cassie,
who had brewed the egg-shell charm against Trustee Days. She had
stayed past her hours for a glimpse of "Miss Peggie," with the best
intention in the world of cheering her up. When the glimpse came,
however, she stood mute--tears channeling the old wrinkled face--while
the nurse patted her hands and made her laugh through the tears. In
fact, Margaret MacLean had been kept so busy doling out cheer and
consolation to others that she had had no time to remember her own
trouble--not until Saint Margaret's had gone to bed.

She was on her way for a final visit to her ward--the visit she had
told Bridget she would make to see if the promise had been kept--when a
line from Hauptman's faery play flashed through her mind: "At dawn we
are kings; at night we are only beggars."

How true it was of her--this day. How beggared she felt! The fact
that she was very nearly penniless troubled her very little; it was the
homelessness--friendlessness--that frightened her. She had never had
but two friends: the one who had gone so long ago was past helping her
now; the other--

No; she had made up her mind some hours before that she should slip
away in the morning without saying anything to the House Surgeon. It
would make it so much easier for him. Otherwise--he might--because of
his friendship--say or do something he would have to regret all his
life. She had been very much in earnest when she had told the Senior
Surgeon on the stairs that such as she laid no claim to the every-day
happiness that felt to the lot of others. That was why she had kept
persistently out of the House Surgeon's way all the evening.

She pushed back the door of Ward C. The night light in the hall
outside was shaded; only a glimmer came through the windows from the
street lamps below; consequently things could not be seen very clearly
or distinguishably in the room. Across the threshold her foot