window that he might
look down upon the stately avenue that ran by the flat-house, and watch
the people going to and fro about their business. But the change,
instead of cheering, cast him into a deeper melancholy. It was nearly a
hundred feet, sheer drop, to those healthy people walking so fast, and
the mere distance depressed him unutterably. He played with the scores
of visiting-cards that his friends had left for him, and he tried to
play with the knobs of the desk close to the head of his bed, and he was
very, very wretched.

[Illustration: "A HOT SICKNESS TOUCHED HIM WITH ITS FINGER."]

One morning he turned his face away from the sunlight and took no
interest in anything, while the hand turned back upon the dial so
swiftly that it almost alarmed the doctor. He said to himself: "Bored,
eh? Yes. You're just the kind of over-educated, over-refined man that
would drop his hold on life through sheer boredom. You've been a most
interesting case so far, and I won't lose you." He said to Sister Ursula
that he would send an entirely fresh prescription by his boy, and that
Sister Ursula must give it to the invalid every twenty minutes without
fail. Also, if the man responded, it might be well to talk to him a
little. "He needs cheering up. There is nothing the matter with him now;
but he won't pick up."

[Illustration: "SISTER URSULA."]

There can be few points of sympathy between a man born, bred, trained,
and sold for and to the world and a good nun made for the service of
other things. Sister Ursula's voice was very sweet, but the matter of
her speech did not interest. The invalid lay still, looking out of the
window upon the street all dressed in its Sunday afternoon emptiness.
Then he shut his eyes. The doctor's boy rang at the door. Sister Ursula
stepped out into the hall, not to disturb the sleeper, and took the
medicine from the boy's hand. Then the lift shot down again, and even as
she turned the wind of its descent puffed up and blew to the spring-lock
door of the rooms with a click only a little more loud than the leap of
her terrified heart.

Sister Ursula tried the door softly, but rich men with many hundred
pounds worth of _bric-a-brac_ buy themselves very well made doors that
fasten with singularly cunning locks. Then the lift returned with the
boy in charge, and, so soon as his Sunday and rather distracted
attention was drawn to the state of affairs, he suggested that Sister
Ursula should go down to t