lank, with blurred intervals of doubtful clarity, until one day she
found herself lying in a bed with Kitty standing at its foot and Peter
sitting beside it. She recollected quite well observing:

"Why, Peter, you've got some grey hairs! I never noticed them before."

Peter had laughed and made some silly reply about old age creeping on,
and presently it seemed to her that Kitty, crying blindly, had led him
out of the room while she herself was taken charge of by a cheerful,
smiling person in a starched frock, whose pretty, curling hair insisted
on escaping from beneath the white cap which coifed it.

Unknown to Nan, those were the first rational words she had spoken
since the night on which she had fainted, after refusing to return to
Trenby Hall with Roger. Moved by some inexplicable premonition of
impending illness, Kitty had insisted on driving her, carefully
pillowed and swaddled in rugs, to her house in Green Street that same
evening.

"If she's going to be ill," she remarked practically, "it will be much
easier to nurse her at my place than at the flat."

Results had justified her. During the attack of brain fever which
followed, it had required all the skill of doctors and nurses to hold
Nan back from the gates of death. The fever burnt up her strength like
a fire, and at first it had seemed as though nothing could check the
delirium. All the strain and misery of the last few months poured
itself out in terrified imaginings. Wildly she besought those who
watched beside her to keep Roger away from her, and when the fear of
Roger was not present, the whole burden of her speech had been a
pitiful, incessant crying out for Peter--Peter!

Nothing would soothe her, and at last, in desperation, Kitty had gone
to Mallory and begged him to come. His first impulse had been to
refuse, not realising the danger of Nan's illness. Then, when it was
made clear to him that her sole chance of life lay in his hands, he had
stifled his own feelings and consented at once.

But when he came Nan did not even recognise him. Instead, she gazed at
him with dry, feverishly brilliant eyes and plucked at his coat-sleeve
with restless fingers.

"Oh, you _look_ kind!" she had exclaimed piteously. "Will you bring
Peter back to me? Nobody here"--she indicated Kitty and one of the
nurses standing a little apart--"nobody here will let him come to
me. . . . I'm sure he'd come if he knew how much I wanted him!"

Mallory had b