delity. Across the
bottom was written in a peculiarly rhythmic script, the legend:

"Toujours a toi. W."

"She's coming back," said Io's voice. "No. Don't come nearer. You'll
shut off the air. Find me a fan."

He ran to the outer room and came back with a palm-leaf.

"She wants something," said Io in an agonized half-voice. "She wants it
so badly. What is it? Help me, Ban! She can't speak. Look at her
eyes--so imploring. Is it medicine?... No! Ban, can't you help?"

Banneker took the silver-framed portrait and placed it in the flaccid
hand. The fingers closed over it. The filmiest wraith of a smile played
about the blue lips.

An hour later, Io came out to Banneker waiting fearfully in the big
room.

"She won't have a doctor. I've given her the strychnia and she insists
she'll be all right."

"Don't you think I ought to go for the doctor, anyway?"

"She wouldn't see him. She's very strong-willed.... That's a wonderful
woman, Ban." Io's voice shook a little.

"Yes."

"How did you know about the picture?"

"I saw it on the dresser. And when I saw her eyes, I guessed."

"Yes; there's only one thing a woman wants like _that_, when she's
dying. You're rather a wonderful person, yourself, to have known. That's
her other secret, Ban. The one I said I couldn't tell you."

"I've forgotten it," replied Banneker gravely.

CHAPTER XII

Attendance upon the sick-room occupied Io's time for several days
thereafter. Morning and afternoon Banneker rode over from the station to
make anxious inquiry. The self-appointed nurse reported progress as
rapid as could be expected, but was constantly kept on the alert because
of the patient's rebellion against enforced idleness. Seizures of the
same sort she had suffered before, it appeared, but none hitherto so
severe. Nothing could be done, she told Io, beyond the administration of
the medicine, for which she had full directions. One day an attack would
finish it all; meantime, in spite of her power of self-repression, she
chafed at the monotony of her imprisonment.

In the late afternoon of the day after the collapse, while Io was
heating water at the fireplace, she heard a drawer open in the sick-room
and hurried back to find Miss Van Arsdale hanging to the dresser, her
face gray-splotched and her fingers convulsively crushing a letter which
she had taken from under lock. Alarmed and angry, the amateur nurse got
her back to bed only half conscious, but still cheri