e fitful, irregular breathing. As her swift mind galloped on to the
end, and the subdued sounds of grief caught her inner ear, another face
began to print itself rapidly on that quick-moving scene--Doris, white
and haggard, looked into her eyes, and she felt her whole heart go out
to her.

Griffin was just ending the sentence that had hurried the fleeting
pictures through her mind when Patricia slipped away unnoticed into the
hall, where she flung on a cape and soft hat of Judith's and softly let
herself out.

The Leighton house was a big dark pile at the end of the street and the
only light visible was in the back room where Patricia knew the
struggle against death and disease was being fought out. She paused
for a long look and then she ran lightly up the steps and put a
shrinking finger on the bell.

It seemed an eternity till the door was grudgingly opened and a
white-faced, gruff boy asked unrecognizingly what she wanted.

Patricia put her questions tremblingly, for she feared the stern,
strange face of the boy in knickerbockers. She had seen him playing
and shouting in the square on other days, and the change was so great
that she felt death alone could have wrought it. But he answered
evenly that 'Geraldine was just the same,' and was closing the door
when Patricia stopped him. After a hasty parley, on his part, at first
stubborn and then yielding, the door closed and Patricia, with beating
heart, ran down the steps and hurried to the side of the house where
the long windows of the drawing room protruded their iron balconies
over the sidewalk.

Here she waited in the shadow of the fluttering violet arc light, with
her eyes fastened to the silent, insensible windows. Ten minutes that
seemed ten eternities went lagging by. Tears of disappointment rose to
Patricia's eyes and she shivered as the gusts of west wind flung the
drops from the saturated trees in a silver shower across the darkened
panes.

"I'll count ten, and then I'll go," she said to herself.

The windows remained dark, and the only sounds on the quiet side street
were the wind in the wet trees and the sizzle of the arc light above
her head.

"Five, six, sev----"

She sprang forward as the second window slowly moved and a muffled
figure stood on the balcony.

"Oh, Doris!" was all she found to say, as she stretched eager hands
toward her.

Doris shrank back with a low, horrified cry.

"Don't come near me!" she warned in a stifled