opened vein.

Misunderstanding, he tried to fling her off. "You are tying me again!
Fiend! Fiend!" he cried. He dashed his arms about, fighting for life.
Her enveloping white apron was splashed and soaked with blood. Even on
her face it fell. As it rained, warm and crimson, upon her, she
shrieked aloud.

In an instant the little room was full of surprised and frightened
faces. "She has killed me!" the man screamed. "Killed me! She is tying
me down to see me die!"

"I want to save him--now," Sister Marion strove to say above the
clamour. No one heeded.

"She did this, and this," the man said, showing his wounded arms. "Ask
her! Ask her!"

"It is true," Marion gasped. Oh, the difficulty of getting her tongue
to form words! "But I want to save him--now."

"Too late," the matron said; and hers and all the faces--the room
seemed full of them--looked at her with loathing, shrinking from her,
as she stood before them, spattered with her husband's blood. "The man
is dying fast."

At that instant one of the younger nurses who had been ministering to
the figure upon the bed, lifted up a warning hand. "He is dead!" she
said.

How the faces glared at her! Strange as well as familiar ones--crowds
upon crowds of faces. Faces of the nurses who had been her friends, who
had loved her; faces from out the past--how came they there with their
heart-remembered names!--her mother's face--her mother who was with the
angels of God! All the forces of Heaven and earth testifying against
her who had done the unspeakable deed.

Was there no one on her side--no one who would shield her from the
accusing eyes?

The cry with which she called upon the doctor's name in its frantic
expression of utmost need must have had power to annihilate time and
space, for while the sound of it still thrilled upon the ear the young
doctor was in the room. She turned to him with the joy of one who finds
his saviour.

Standing before her, his hands pressed firmly upon her shoulders, he
bent his head till the strong, kind face almost touched her own.

"Murderer!" he whispered in her ear, and flung her from him.

She lay where he had thrown her; but someone's hands were still pressed
upon her shoulders, a voice was still whispering "Murderer!" in her
ear--or was it--was it "Marion" the voice whispered?

* * * * *

"Marion, how soundly you have slept--and not even undressed! It is
eight o'clock, and time for