f the hospital, the sun danced
invitingly, the spring breezes were astir. Sister Marion heeded them
not at all. Having left the patient in the private ward to the nurse
who succeeded her, she lingered listlessly in the wide, white corridor
upon which all the wards opened, too preoccupied to remember that she
was doing anything unusual.

There the doctor, having made the round of the wards, found her
lingering still.

"Go to bed!" he said to her, authoritatively. "You will make yourself
ill."

"Not I."

"Go to bed!" he said again, and, although his tone was not less
authoritative, he smiled.

The feverish, pale blue eyes looked at him strangely with a regretful,
wistful gaze, and he melted in a moment into unmixed gentleness. "Why
are you being obstinate to-day? Go and lie down and get to sleep," he
begged her.

"What does it matter if I do not?"

"It matters very much, to you, to your patients, to me. Will you go?"

She said yes, turned slowly away, and, passing down a passage leading
from the central corridor, went to her tiny room. Arrived, she did not
trouble to undress, but throwing off the cap which was tied beneath her
chin, flung herself upon her bed.

"It is the last thing he will ask of me and I shall do it," she said.

She had known that she could not sleep. She put her hand above her
burning eyes and forcibly closed the lids that remained so achingly
open. In the darkness so achieved she must think out her plans; she
must think how to get away from this place without attracting
observation, leaving no trace of her removal, giving no clue to her
destination. It was imperative that the step she decided on should be
taken soon; she must form her project clearly, and there must be no
blundering or mistake. But her overtired brain, refusing to work as she
willed, presented only before her feverish eyes a picture of the young
doctor coming in the spring sunshine down the hospital ward, a bunch of
violets in his coat. How clean, and strong, and helpful he looked! And
his voice--was it not indeed one to obey? It must be her fancy only
that of late it had taken on a softer tone for her.

Her fancy! Her vain, mad fancy!

She flung over upon her bed and forced herself to contemplate what it
was she had to do: To get away from the man who lay in the private
ward; and from the place in which she had found a refuge till her evil
angel had set him upon her track again.

Since the day, ten years ago, when s