round her head, and she cried aloud in
her terror. Still clutching Nevill's sleeve, she staggered and fell
across him, and he woke.

He woke dazed; but he had sense enough to roll her in the rug and crush
the flames out.

CHAPTER XVI

THE NEW LIFE

"There is now every hope," so wrote that cheerful lady, Mrs. Wilcox, "of
dear Molly's complete recovery."

This, translated from the language of optimism, meant that dear Molly's
beauty was dead, but that Molly would live.

To live, indeed, was not what she had wanted. Mrs. Nevill Tyson had made
up her mind to die; and in the certain hope of death she had borne the
dressing of her burns without a murmur. Lying there, swathed in her
bandages, life came back slowly and unwillingly to her aching nerves and
thirsting veins; and the sense of life woke with a sting, as if her brain
were bound tight, tight, and the pulse of thought beat thickly under the
intolerable ligatures. Then, when they told her she would live, she
screamed and made as though she would tear the bandages from her head
and throat.

"Take them off," she cried, "I won't have them. You said I was going to
die, and I want to die--I want to die--I tell you. Don't let Nevill come
near me. He'll want to come and look at me when I'm dead. Don't let
him come!"

But Nevill was there. The first thing he did, when he heard the doctor's
verdict, was to go straight into his wife's room and cry. He bent over
her bed, sobbing hysterically--"Molly--Molly--my little wife!"

That made her suddenly quiet.

She turned towards him, and her eyes looked bigger and darker than ever
in the section of her face that was not covered with bandages. She held
out her hand, the right hand that had clung with such a grip to his
coat-sleeve and was thus left unhurt. He stroked it and kissed it many
times over, he said what a pretty hand it was; and then, when he
remembered the things he had said and thought of her, he cried again.

"This excitement is very bad for her. Shall I tell him to go away?"
whispered Mrs. Wilcox to the nurse. The nurse shook her head.

Mrs. Nevill Tyson had heard; she gave a queer little fluttering laugh
that was meant to be derisive and ended like a sob. "If you went away,
both of you," said she, "I might feel better."

They went away and left them.

From that moment Mrs. Nevill Tyson was no longer bent upon dying. She had
conceived an immense hope--that old, old hope of the New Life. They would