at a memory you have!" Sebastian cried, admiring against his will.
"It is simply marvellous! I never saw anyone like you in my life...
except once. HE was a man, a doctor, a colleague of mine--dead long
ago.... Why--" he mused, and gazed hard at her. Hilda shrank before
his gaze. "This is curious," he went on slowly, at last; "very curious.
You--why, you resemble him!"

"Do I?" Hilda replied, with forced calm, raising her eyes to his. Their
glances met. That moment, I saw each had recognised something; and from
that day forth I was instinctively aware that a duel was being waged
between Sebastian and Hilda,--a duel between the two ablest and most
singular personalities I had ever met; a duel of life and death--though
I did not fully understand its purport till much, much later.

Every day after that, the poor, wasted girl in Number Fourteen grew
feebler and fainter. Her temperature rose; her heart throbbed weakly.
She seemed to be fading away. Sebastian shook his head. "Lethodyne is
a failure," he said, with a mournful regret. "One cannot trust it. The
case might have recovered from the operation, or recovered from the
drug; but she could not recover from both together. Yet the operation
would have been impossible without the drug, and the drug is useless
except for the operation."

It was a great disappointment to him. He hid himself in his room, as was
his wont when disappointed, and went on with his old work at his beloved
microbes.

"I have one hope still," Hilda murmured to me by the bedside, when our
patient was at her worst. "If one contingency occurs, I believe we may
save her."

"What is that?" I asked.

She shook her head waywardly. "You must wait and see," she answered. "If
it comes off, I will tell you. If not, let it swell the limbo of lost
inspirations."

Next morning early, however, she came up to me with a radiant face,
holding a newspaper in her hand. "Well, it HAS happened!" she cried,
rejoicing. "We shall save poor Isabel Number Fourteen, I mean; our way
is clear, Dr. Cumberledge."

I followed her blindly to the bedside, little guessing what she could
mean. She knelt down at the head of the cot. The girl's eyes were
closed. I touched her cheek; she was in a high fever. "Temperature?" I
asked.

"A hundred and three."

I shook my head. Every symptom of fatal relapse. I could not imagine
what card Hilda held in reserve. But I stood there, waiting.

She whispered in the girl's ear: "Arthur'