ense which
cannot fool the doctor, appears so hysterical, so distorted by the
heats of self-interest, so monkey-like!

Oh, well,--she was extraordinary! I was impressed from the moment when,
having reread MacMechem's notes on the case under the lamp, and then
having crossed the blue-and-gold room to the other wall, I drew aside
the corners of an ice pack and gazed for the first time upon little
Virginia.

When I raised my glance I noticed the mother for the first time. I might
have stopped then to wonder that this child was her daughter, for the
woman was one of those who with a fairly refined skill endeavor to
retain the appearance of youth. I knew her history. I knew how her feet
had moved--it always seems to me so futilely--through miles and miles
and miles of dance on polished floors and her mouth in millions of false
smiles. She had been debutante, belle, coquette, old maid. Marbury had
married her when wrinkles already were at her chin and her hands had
taken on the dried look which no fight against age can truly conceal;
then after six years of longing for new hopes in life she had had a
single child.

Just as she turned to go out, I saw her eyes upon me, dry, unwinking.
But I know the look that means that death is unthinkable, that a woman
has concentrated all her love on one being. It is not the appeal of a
man or woman--that look. Her eyes were not human. I tell you, they were
the praying eyes of a thoroughbred dog!

I knew I must fight with that case--put strength into it--call upon my
own vitality....

The bed on which Virginia lay was placed sideways along the wall--as I
have said--the Marburys' wall. I drew a chair close to it, and before I
looked again at the child I glanced up at the nurse to be sure of her
character. Perhaps I should say that I found her to be a thin-lipped
person not over thirty, with long, square-tipped fingers, eyes as cold
as metal, and colorless skin of that peculiar texture which always
denotes to me an unbreakable vitality and endurance, and perhaps a mind
of hard sense. Her name was Peters.

MacMechem's notes on the case, which I still held in my hand, set forth
the usual symptoms--headache, inequality of the eye pupils, vertigo,
convulsions. He had determined that the variety was not the
cerebro-spinal or epidemic form. He had tapped the spinal canal with
moderate results. According to his observations and those of the nurse
there was an intermittent coma. For hours lit