the hideous flow. They were
followed by the porters of the hospital and the nurse in charge. Her
presence commanded instantaneous calm.

"There are far too many people in this room," said she. Her expelling
glance fell first on Poppy, throned on the bed, then on the convulsive
Spinks. She turned more gently to Rankin, in whose mouth she saw
remonstrance, and to Maddox, in whose eyes she read despair. "It will
really be better for him to take him to the hospital."

"No," cried Spinks, darting in again from the landing, "take him to
my house, 45, Dalmeny Av--" but the Beaver plucked him by the sleeve;
for she thought of Muriel Maud.

"No, no, take him to mine, 87, Sussex Square," said Rankin, and he
insisted. But in the end he suffered himself to be overruled; for he
thought darkly of his wife.

"I'd give half my popularity if I could save him," he said to Maddox.

"Half your popularity won't save him, nor yet the whole of it," said
Maddox savagely. In that moment they hated themselves and each other
for the wrong they had done him. Their hearts smote them as they
thought of the brutalities of Sunday night.

The woman still held her ground in the centre of the room where she
stood scowling at the nurse as she busied herself about the bed.

"I'd a seen to 'im ef 'e'd a let me," she reiterated.

Maddox dealt with her. He flicked a sovereign on to the table. "Look
here," said he, "suppose you take that and go out quietly."

There was a momentary glitter in her eyes, but her fingers hesitated.

"I didn' fink 'e 'ad no frien's wen I come in." It was her way of
intimating that what she had done she had not done for money.

"All right, take it."

She drew out a filthy grey flannel bag from the bosom of her gown and
slipped the gold into it. And still she hesitated. She could not
understand why so large a sum was offered for such slight services as
she had rendered. It must have been for--Another thought stirred in
her brute brain.

They were raising Rickman in his bed before taking him away. His
shoulders were supported on the nurse's arm, his head dropped on her
breast. The posture revealed all the weakness of his slender body. The
woman turned. And as she looked at the helpless figure she was visited
by a dim sense of something strange and beautiful and pure, something
(his helplessness perhaps) that was outraged by her presence, and
called for vindication.

"'E never 'ad no truck with me," she said. It struc