aking a morbid interest in all the
sensational reports of suicides that she can find in the papers, and
that she has been rereading Cleopatra's experiments with poisons."

* * * * *

"Timoroso's case is growing alarming. I have told Elsie, and she feels
she is directly responsible for her condition, and bemoans her
thoughtlessness in ever telling Tim what she saw in her hand. She is
doing all she can now to cheer Tim up and ridicule her out of her
morbidness. She is always running in with some funny speech to make us
laugh. Of course, all the other girls follow her example, so that
poor little Tim is the most popular girl in school now; but I catch
her looking at her hand a dozen times a day, with all the horror in
her face that Lady Macbeth's had, over the spots that would not out."

* * * * *

"The crisis came last night. I was awakened by hearing a window
stealthily opened, and the moonlight was bright enough to show me
Timoroso stepping up on the sill.

"'Tim!' I cried, 'what on earth are you doing?' She turned and looked
at me wildly for an instant, and then, running across the room, flung
herself down on the bed beside me.

"'Oh, I am so glad I did not do it!' she cried, with a little moan. 'I
felt that I must jump out of the window. I am glad you called me.
Still,'--she looked round wildly again,--'if I am doomed to such an
awful fate, it will have to come sometime, and it might be better to
have it over with soon, than to live in this constant dread.'

"When I told Elsie about it, this morning, she cried, and that is
something I never saw Elsie Gayland do before.

"'You've got to go with me to see Doctor Phelps about Tim!' she
said. 'I can manage to get leave of absence for both of us in one way
or another, for I am desperate enough to accomplish anything.'

[Illustration: "'LOOKING AT HER HAND A DOZEN TIMES A DAY.'"]

"Doctor Phelps listened like a father to Elsie's confession of her
thoughtlessness in giving Tim such a nervous shock. 'I used to dabble
in phrenology and chiromancy, and such things, when I was young,' he
said. 'As guides to character they are certainly interesting and often
helpful, but, one should remember, by no means infallible.'

"Then he showed us a little mark on his palm. 'Years ago,' he said, 'I
was told that that presaged an early death by drowning. It was to
occur between the ages of twenty and twenty-five, and