re is a child or
not. I want her--I care for nothing else. I want to look at her, I want
to speak to her, whether she is alive or dead. But if there is a spark
of life in her, I believe she will hear me."

Dr. Warren sat and watched him, wondering. He knew curious things of the
human creature, things which most of his confreres did not know. He knew
that Life was a mysterious thing, and that even a dying flame of it
might sometimes be fanned to flickering anew by powers more subtle than
science usually regards as applicable influences. He knew the nature of
the half-dead woman lying on her bed upstairs, and he comprehended what
the soul of her life had been,--her divinely innocent passion for a
self-centred man. He had seen it in the tortured courage of her eyes in
hours of mortal agony.

"Don't forget," she had said. "Our Father which art in Heaven. Don't let
anyone forget. Hallowed be thy name."

The man, leaning upon his shaking hands before him, stood there, for
these moments at least, a harrowed thing. Not a single individual of his
acquaintance would have known him.

"I want to see her before the breath leaves her," he gave forth in a
harsh, broken whisper. "I want to speak. Let me see her."

Dr. Warren left his chair slowly. Out of a thousand chances against her,
might this one chance be for her,--the chance of her hearing, and being
called back to the shores she was drifting from, by this stiff,
conventional fellow's voice. There was no knowing the wondrousness of a
loving human thing, even when its shackles were loosening themselves to
set it free.

"I will speak to those in charge with me," he said. "Will you control
every outward expression of feeling?"

"Yes."

Adjoining Lady Walderhurst's sleeping apartment was a small boudoir
where the medical men consulted together. Two of them were standing near
the window conversing in whispers.

Walderhurst merely nodded and went to wait apart by the fire. Ceremony
had ceased to exist. Dr. Warren joined the pair at the window. Lord
Walderhurst only heard one or two sentences.

"I am afraid that nothing, now, can matter--at any moment."

* * * * *

Those who do not know from experience what he saw when he entered the
next room have reason to give thanks to such powers as they put trust
in.

There ruled in the large, dim chamber an awful order and silence. The
faint flickering of the fire was a marked sound. There was no ot