lectric.
Waves of emotion passed to and fro. "But surely," I cried, "you do not
mean to say--"

She waved me aside once more. "I will not put my hand to the plough,
and then look back," she answered, firmly. "Dr. Cumberledge, spare me.
I came to Nathaniel's for a purpose. I told you at the time what that
purpose was--in part: to be near Sebastian. I want to be near him... for
an object I have at heart. Do not ask me to reveal it; do not ask me to
forego it. I am a woman, therefore weak. But I need your aid. Help me,
instead of hindering me."

"Hilda," I cried, leaning forward, with quiverings of my heart, "I will
help you in whatever way you will allow me. But let me at any rate help
you with the feeling that I am helping one who means in time--"

At that moment, as unkindly fate would have it, the door opened, and
Sebastian entered.

"Nurse Wade," he began, in his iron voice, glancing about him with stern
eyes, "where are those needles I ordered for that operation? We must be
ready in time before Nielsen comes.... Cumberledge, I shall want you."

The golden opportunity had come and gone. It was long before I found a
similar occasion for speaking to Hilda.

Every day after that the feeling deepened upon me that Hilda was there
to watch Sebastian. WHY, I did not know; but it was growing certain
that a life-long duel was in progress between these two--a duel of some
strange and mysterious import.

The first approach to a solution of the problem which I obtained came
a week or two later. Sebastian was engaged in observing a case where
certain unusual symptoms had suddenly supervened. It was a case of some
obscure affection of the heart. I will not trouble you here with the
particular details. We all suspected a tendency to aneurism. Hilda Wade
was in attendance, as she always was on Sebastian's observation cases.
We crowded round, watching. The Professor himself leaned over the cot
with some medicine for external application in a basin. He gave it to
Hilda to hold. I noticed that as she held it her fingers trembled, and
that her eyes were fixed harder than ever upon Sebastian. He turned
round to his students. "Now this," he began, in a very unconcerned
voice, as if the patient were a toad, "is a most unwonted turn for the
disease to take. It occurs very seldom. In point of fact, I have only
observed the symptom once before; and then it was fatal. The patient in
that instance"--he paused dramatically--"was the notor