her moods too
well to be officiously inquisitive. So she was left alone to the task
she had chosen, and was faithful to it to the end.

It was not so very long it lasted, though to her it seemed a
life-time. A few weeks the doctor made his visits, and at last one
afternoon, in going away, he beckoned her out of the room.

He spoke in an undertone.

"To-night you may watch closely," he said; "perhaps toward
morning--but it will be very quiet."

It was very quiet. The day had been bitter cold, and as it drew to a
close it became colder still, and a fierce wind rose and whistled
about the old house, shaking the ill-fitting windows and doors. But
the sick man did not seem to hear it. Toward midnight he fell into a
deep and quiet sleep.

Before the fire Natalie sat waiting. Now and then a little shudder
passed over her as if she could not resist the cold. And yet the fire
in the stove was a bright one. She had smiled to herself as she had
heaped the coal upon it, seeing that there was so little left.

"It will last until morning," she said, "and that will be long
enough." Through all the nights during which she had watched she had
never felt the room so still as it seemed now between the gusts and
soughing of the wind. "Something is in the air which has not been in
it before," she said.

About one o'clock she rose and replenished the fire, putting the last
fragment of coal upon it, and then sat down to watch it again.

Its slow kindling and glowing into life fascinated her. It was not
long before she could scarcely remove her eyes from it. She was trying
to calculate--with a weird fancy in her mind--how long it would last,
and whether it would die out suddenly or slowly.

As she cowered over it, if one of the men who admired her had entered
he might well scarcely have known her. She was hollow-eyed, haggard
and pallid--for the time even her great beauty was gone. As he had
left her that day, the doctor had said to himself discontentedly that
after all, these wonderful faces last but a short time.

The fire caught at the coal, lighted fitful blazes among it, and crept
over it in a dull red, which brightened into hot scarlet.

And the sick man lay sleeping, breathing faintly but lightly.

"It will last until dawn," she said,--"until dawn, and no longer."

When the first cinder dropped with a metallic sound, she started
violently and laid her hand upon her breast, but after that she
scarcely stirred.

The fit