cal thermometer, which she shook up and down,
eying the patient meanwhile with a calm, impersonal scrutiny. The
Lieutenant raised his head and stared up at the white figure beside
his cot. His eyes opened and then shut quickly, with a startled look,
in which doubt struggled with wonderful happiness. His hand stole out
fearfully and warily until it touched her apron, and then, finding it
was real, he clutched it desperately, and twisting his face and body
toward her, pulled her down, clasping her hands in both of his, and
pressing them close to his face and eyes and lips. He put them from
him for an instant, and looked at her through his tears.

"Sweetheart," he whispered, "sweetheart, I knew you'd come."

As the nurse knelt on the deck beside him, her thermometer slipped
from her fingers and broke, and she gave an exclamation of annoyance.
The young Doctor picked up the pieces and tossed them overboard.
Neither of them spoke, but they smiled appreciatively. The Lieutenant
was looking at the nurse with the wonder and hope and hunger of soul
in his eyes with which a dying man looks at the cross the priest holds
up before him. What he saw where the German nurse was kneeling was a
tall, fair girl with great bands and masses of hair, with a head
rising like a lily from a firm, white throat, set on broad shoulders
above a straight back and sloping breast--a tall, beautiful creature,
half-girl, half-woman, who looked back at him shyly, but steadily.

"Listen," he said.

The voice of the sick man was so sure and so sane that the young
Doctor started, and moved nearer to the head of the cot. "Listen,
dearest," the Lieutenant whispered. "I wanted to tell you before I
came South. But I did not dare; and then I was afraid something might
happen to me, and I could never tell you, and you would never know. So
I wrote it to you in the will I made at Baiquiri, the night before the
landing. If you hadn't come now, you would have learned it in that
way. You would have read there that there never was any one but you;
the rest were all dream people, foolish, silly--mad. There is no one
else in the world but you; you have been the only thing in life that
has counted. I thought I might do something down here that would make
you care. But I got shot going up a hill, and after that I wasn't able
to do anything. It was very hot, and the hills were on fire; and they
took me prisoner, and kept me tied down here, burning on these coals.
I can'