the paroxysm Mr. Bentley entered and stood over her by the bedside,
and suddenly her struggles ceased. At first she lay intensely still,
staring at him with wide eyes of fear. He sat down and took her hand,
and spoke to her, quietly and naturally, and her pupils relaxed. She
fell into a sleep, still clinging to his fingers.

It was Sally who opposed the doctor's wish to send her to a hospital.

"If it's only a question of getting back her health, she'd better die,"
she declared. "We've got but one chance with her, Dr. Giddings, to keep
her here. When she finds out she's been to a hospital, that will be the
end of it with her kind. We'll never get hold of her again. I'll take
care of Mrs. McQuillen."

Doctor Giddings was impressed by this wisdom.

"You think you have a chance, Miss Grower?" he asked. He had had a
hospital experience.

Miss Grower was wont to express optimism in deeds rather than words.

"If I didn't think so, I'd ask you to put a little more in your
hypodermic next time," she replied.

And the doctor went away, wondering . . . .

Drink! Convalescence brought little release for the watchers. The
fiends would retire, pretending to have abandoned the field, only to
swoop down again when least expected. There were periods of calm when it
seemed as though a new and bewildered personality were emerging, amazed
to find in life a kindly thing, gazing at the world as one new-born. And
again, Mrs. McQuillen or Ella Finley might be seen running bareheaded
across the street for Miss Grower. Physical force was needed, as the
rector discovered on one occasion; physical force, and something more,
a dauntlessness that kept Sally Grower in the room after the other women
had fled in terror. Then remorse, despondency, another fear . . . .

As the weeks went by, the relapses certainly became fewer. Something was
at work, as real in its effects as the sunlight, but invisible. Hodder
felt it, and watched in suspense while it fought the beasts in this
woman, rending her frame in anguish. The frame might succumb, the breath
might leave it to moulder, but the struggle, he knew, would go until the
beasts were conquered. Whence this knowledge?--for it was knowledge.

On the quieter days of her convalescence she seemed, indeed, more Madonna
than Magdalen as she sat against the pillows, her red-gold hair lying in
two heavy plaits across her shoulders, her cheeks pale; the inner,
consuming fires that smouldered in her eyes