hemselves along until they numbered ten.

In the last half of each night Zura and I watched by Page and wrestled
with the cruel thing that held him captive. They were painful, but
revealing hours. I was very close to the great secrets of life, and the
eternal miracle of coming dawn was only matched in tender beauty by the
wonder of a woman's love. It was Zura's cool, soft hand that held the
burning lids and shut out the hideous specters Page's fevered eyes saw
closing down upon him. It was her voice that soothed him into slumber
after the frenzy of delirium.

"Ah," he'd pant, weary of the struggle with a fancied foe, "you've come,
my lovely princess. No! You're my goddess!" Then with tones piteous and
beseeching he would begin anew the prayer ever present on his lips since
his illness. "Beloved goddess, tell me--what did I do with them? You are
divine; you know. Help me to find them quick. Quick; they are shutting
the door; it has bars. I cannot see your face."

"I am here, Page," Zura would answer. "If the door shuts, I'll be right
by your side."

In love for the boy each member of the house was ready day or night for
instant service, but vain were our combined efforts to help the fevered
brain to lay hold of definite thought long enough for him to name the
thing that was breaking his heart. From pleading for time to search for
something, he would wander into scenes of his boyhood. Once he appealed
to me as his mother and asked me to sing him to sleep. Before I could
steady my lips he had drifted into talk of the sea and tried to sing a
sailor's song. Often he fancied himself on a pirate ship and begged not
to be put off on some lonely island. He fiercely resisted. But his
feebleness was no match for Zura's young strength, and as she held him
she would begin to sing:

"Before I slept I thought of thee;
Then fell asleep and sought for thee
And found thee:
Had I but known 'twas only seeming,
I had not waked, but lay forever dreaming."

"Dreaming, dreaming," the boy would repeat. "Sweetheart, you are my
dearest dream."

Inch by inch we fought and held at bay the enemy. We lost all contact
with the outside. To us the center of the world was the pink-and-white
room, and on the stricken boy that lay on the bed was staked all our
hope.

The long delayed crisis flashed upon us early one morning when the
doctors found in what we had feared was the end only a healing sleep
from which Page awak