Just one thing: Lloyd must leave the case at once, that very day if it were possible. He must save her; must turn her back from this destruction toward which she was rushing, impelled by such a foolish, mistaken notion of duty.

"Yes," he said, "there's just that to be done, and, by God! it shall be done."

But would Lloyd be turned back from a course she had chosen for herself? Could he persuade her? Then with this thought of possible opposition Bennett's resolve all at once tightened to the sticking point. Never in the darkest hours of his struggle with the arctic ice had his determination grown so fierce; never had his resolution so girded itself, so nerved itself to crush down resistance. The force of his will seemed brusquely to be quadrupled and decupled. He would do as he desired; come what might he would gain his end. He would stop at nothing, hesitate at nothing. It would probably be difficult to get her from her post, but with all his giant's strength Bennett set himself to gain her safety.

A great point that he believed was in his favour, a consideration that influenced him to adopt so irrevocable a resolution, was his belief that Lloyd loved him. Bennett was not a woman's man. Men he could understand and handle like so many manikins, but the nature of his life and work did not conduce to a knowledge of women. Bennett did not understand them. In his interview with Lloyd when she had so strenuously denied Ferriss' story Bennett could not catch the ring of truth. It had gotten into his mind that Lloyd loved him. He believed easily what he wanted to believe, and his faith in Lloyd's love for him had become a part and parcel of his fundamental idea of things, not readily to be driven out even by Lloyd herself.

Bennett's resolution was taken. Never had he failed in accomplishing that upon which he set his mind. He would not fail now. Beyond a certain limit—a limit which now he swiftly reached and passed—Bennett's determination to carry his point became, as it were, a sort of obsession; the sweep of the tremendous power he unchained carried his own self along with it in its resistless onrush. At such, times there was no light of reason in his actions. He saw only his point, beheld only his goal; deaf to all voices that would call him back, blind to all consideration that would lead him to swerve, reckless of everything that he trampled under foot, he stuck to his aim until that aim was an accomplished fact. When the grip of the Ice had threatened to close upon him and crush him, he had hurled himself against its barriers with an energy and resolve to conquer that was little short of directed frenzy. So it was with him now.

* * * * *

When Lloyd had parted from the Campbells in the square before the house, she had gone directly to the railway station of a suburban line, and, within the hour, was on her way to Medford. As always happened when an interesting case was to be treated, her mind became gradually filled with it to the exclusion of everything else. The Campbells, and Bennett's ready acceptance of a story that put her in so humiliating a light, were forgotten as the train swept her from the heat and dust of the City out into the green reaches of country to the southward. What had been done upon the case she had no means of telling. She only knew that the case was of unusual virulence and well advanced. It had killed one nurse already and seriously endangered the life of another, but so far from reflecting on the danger to herself, Lloyd felt a certain exhilaration in the thought that she was expected to succeed where others had succumbed. Another battle with the Enemy was at hand, the Enemy who, though conquered on a hundred fields, must inevitably triumph in the end. Once again this Enemy had stooped and caught a human being in his cold grip. Once again Life and Death were at grapples, and Death was strong, and from out the struggle a cry had come—had come to her—a cry for help.

All the exuberance of battle grew big within her breast. She was impatient to be there—there at hand—to face the Enemy again across the sick-bed, where she had so often faced and outfought him before; and, matching her force against his force, her obstinacy against his strength—the strength that would pull the life from her grasp—her sleepless vigilance against his stealth, her intelligence against his cunning, her courage against his terrors, her resistance against his attack, her skill against his strategy, her science against his world-old, worldwide experience, win the fight, save the life, hold firm against his slow, resistless pull and triumph again, if it was only for the day.

Succeed she would and must. Her inborn obstinacy, her sturdy refusal to yield her ground, whatever it should be, her stubborn power of resistance, her tenacity of her chosen course, came to her aid as she drew swiftly near to the spot whereon the battle would be fought. Mentally she braced herself, holding back with all her fine, hard-tempered, native strength. No, she would not yield the life to the Enemy; no, she would not give up; no, she would not recede. Let the Enemy do his worst—she was strong against his efforts.

At Medford, which she reached toward four in the afternoon, after an hour's ride from the City, she found a conveyance waiting for her, and was driven rapidly through streets bordered with villas and closely shaven lawns to a fair-sized country seat on the outskirts of the town. The housekeeper met her at the door with the information that the doctor was, at the moment, in the sick-room, and had left orders that the nurse should be brought to him the moment she arrived. The housekeeper showed Lloyd the way to the second landing, knocking upon the half-open door at the end of the hall, and ushering her in without waiting for an answer.

Lloyd took in the room at a glance—the closely drawn curtains, the screen between the bed and the windows, the doctor standing on the hearth-rug, and the fever-inflamed face of the patient on the pillow. Then all her power of self-repression could not keep her from uttering a smothered exclamation.

For she, the woman who, with all the savage energy of him, Bennett loved, had, at peril of her life, come to nurse Bennett's nearest friend, the man of all others dear to him—Richard Ferriss.



VI.

Two days after Dr. Pitts had brought Ferriss to his country house in the outskirts of Medford he had been able to diagnose his sickness as typhoid fever, and at once had set about telegraphing the fact to Bennett. Then it had occurred to him that he did not know where Bennett had gone. Bennett had omitted notifying him of his present whereabouts, and, acting upon Dr. Pitts' advice, had hidden himself away from everybody. Neither at his club nor at his hotel, where his mail accumulated in extraordinary quantities, had any forwarding address been left. Bennett would not even know that Ferriss had been moved to Medford. So much the worse. It could not be helped. There was nothing for the doctor to do but to leave Bennett in ignorance and go ahead and fight for the life of Ferriss as best he could. Pitts arranged for a brother physician to take over his practice, and devoted himself entirely to Ferriss. And Ferriss sickened and sickened, and went steadily from bad to worse. The fever advanced regularly to a certain stage, a stage of imminent danger, and there paused. Rarely had Pitts been called upon to fight a more virulent form of the disease.

What made matters worse was that Ferriss hung on for so long a time without change one way or another. Pitts had long since been convinced of ulceration in the membrane of the intestines, but it astonished him that this symptom persisted so long without signs either of progressing or diminishing. The course of the disease was unusually slow. The first nurse had already had time to sicken and die; a second had been infected, and yet Ferriss "hung on," neither sinking nor improving, yet at every hour lying perilously near death. It was not often that death and life locked horns for so long, not often that the chance was so even. Many was the hour, many was the moment, when a hair would have turned the balance, and yet the balance was preserved.

At her abrupt recognition of Ferriss, in this patient whom she had been summoned to nurse, and whose hold upon life was so pitifully weak, Lloyd's heart gave a great leap and then sank ominously in her breast. Her first emotion was one of boundless self-reproach. Why had she not known of this? Why had she not questioned Bennett more closely as to his friend's sickness? Might she not have expected something like this? Was not typhoid the one evil to be feared and foreseen after experiences such as Ferriss had undergone—the fatigue and privations of the march over the ice, and the subsequent months aboard the steam whaler, with its bad food, its dirt, and its inevitable overcrowding?

And while she had been idling in the country, this man, whom she had known since her girlhood better and longer than any of her few acquaintances, had been struck down, and day by day had weakened and sickened and wasted, until now, at any hour, at any moment, the life might be snuffed out like the fight of a spent candle. What a miserable incompetent had she been! That day in the park when she had come upon him, so weak and broken and far spent, why had she not, with all her training and experience, known that even then the flame was flickering down to the socket, that a link in the silver chain was weakening? Now, perhaps, it was too late. But quick her original obstinacy rose up in protest. No! she would not yield the life. No, no, no; again and a thousand times no! He belonged to her. Others she had saved, others far less dear to her than Ferriss. Her last patient—the little girl—she had caught back from death at the eleventh hour, and of all men would she not save Ferriss? In such sickness as this it was the nurse and not the doctor who must be depended upon. And, once again, never so strong, never so fine, never so glorious, her splendid independence, her pride in her own strength, her indomitable self-reliance leaped in her breast, leaped and stood firm, hard as tempered steel, head to the Enemy, daring the assault, defiant, immovable, unshaken in its resolve, unconquerable in the steadfast tenacity of its purpose.

The story that Ferriss had told to Bennett, that uncalled-for and inexplicable falsehood, was a thing forgotten. Death stood at the bed-head, and in that room the little things of life had no place. The king was holding court, and the swarm of small, everyday issues, like a crowd of petty courtiers, were not admitted to his presence. Ferriss' life was in danger. Lloyd saw no more than that. At once she set about the work.

In a few rapid sentences exchanged in low voices between her and the doctor Lloyd made herself acquainted with the case.

"We've been using the ice-pack and wet-pack to bring down the temperature in place of the cold bath," the doctor explained. "I'm afraid of pericarditis."

"Quinine?" inquired Lloyd.

"From twenty to forty grains in the morning and evening. Here's the temperature chart for the last week. If we reach this point in axilla again—" he indicated one hundred and two degrees with a thumb-nail—"we'll have to risk the cold bath, but only in that case."

"And the tympanites?"

Dr. Pitts put his chin in the air.

"Grave—there's an intestinal ulcer, no doubt of it, and if it perforates—well, we can send for the undertaker then."

"Has he had hemorrhages?"

"Two in the first week, but not profuse—he seemed to rally fairly well afterward. We have been injecting ether in case of anemia. Really, Miss Searight, the case is interesting, but wicked, wicked as original sin. Killed off my first nurse out of hand—good little boy, conscientious enough; took no care of himself; ate his meals in the sick-room against my wishes; off he went—dicrotic pulse, diarrhea, vomiting, hospital, thrombosis of pulmonary artery, pouf, requiescat."

"And Miss Wakeley?"

"Knocked under yesterday, and she was fairly saturated with creolin night and morning. I don't know how it happened.... Well, God for us all. Here he is—that's the point for us." He glanced toward the bed, and for the third time Lloyd looked at the patient.

Ferriss was in a quiet delirium, and, at intervals, from behind his lips, dry and brown and fissured, there came the sounds of low and indistinct muttering. Barring a certain prominence of the cheek-bones, his face was not very wasted, but its skin was a strange, dusky pallor. The cold pack was about his head like a sort of caricatured crown.

"Well," repeated Pitts in a moment, "I've been waiting for you to come to get a little rest. Was up all last night. Suppose you take over charge."

Lloyd nodded her head, removing her hat and gloves, making herself ready. Pitts gave her some final directions, and left her alone in the sick-room. For the moment there was nothing to do for the patient. Lloyd put on her hospital slippers and moved silently about the room, preparing for the night, and making some few changes in the matter of light and ventilation. Then for a while the medicine occupied her attention, and she was at some pains to carefully sort out the antiseptic and disinfectants from the drugs themselves. These latter she arranged on a table by themselves—studying the labels—assuring herself of their uses. Quinine for the regular morning and evening doses, sulphonal and trional for insomnia, ether for injections in case of anemia after hemorrhage, morphine for delirium, citrite of caffeine for weakness of the heart, tincture of valerian for the tympanites, bismuth to relieve nausea and vomiting, and the crushed ice wrapped in flannel cloths for the cold pack in the event of hyperpyrexia.

Later in the evening she took the temperature in the armpit, noted the condition of the pulse, and managed to get Ferriss—still in his quiet, muttering delirium—to drink a glass of peptonised milk. She administered the quinine, reading the label, as was her custom, three times, once as she took it up, again as she measured the dose, and a last time as she returned the bottle to its place. Everything she did, every minute change in Ferriss's condition, she entered upon a chart, so that in the morning when Dr. Pitts should relieve her he could grasp the situation at a glance.

The night passed without any but the expected variations of the pulse and temperature, though toward daylight Lloyd could fancy that Ferriss, for a few moments, came out of his delirium and was conscious of his surroundings. For a few seconds his eyes seemed to regain something of their intelligence, and his glance moved curiously about the room. But Lloyd, sitting near the foot-board of the bed, turned her head from him. It was not expedient that Ferriss should recognise her now.

Lloyd could not but commend the wisdom of bringing Ferriss to Dr. Pitts's own house in so quiet a place as Medford. The doctor risked nothing. He was without a family, the only other occupants of the house being the housekeeper and cook. On more than one occasion, when an interesting case needed constant watching, Pitts had used his house as a sanatorium. Quiet as the little village itself was, the house was removed some little distance from its outskirts. The air was fine and pure. The stillness, the calm, the unbroken repose, was almost Sabbath-like. In the early watches of the night, just at the turn of the dawn, Lloyd heard the faint rumble of a passing train at the station nearly five miles away. For hours that and the prolonged stridulating of the crickets were the only sounds. Then at last, while it was yet dark, a faint chittering of waking birds began from under the eaves and from the apple-trees in the yard about the house. Lloyd went to the window, and, drawing aside the curtains, stood there for a moment looking out. She could see part of the road leading to the town, and, in the distance, the edge of the town itself, a few well-kept country residences of suburban dwellers of the City, and, farther on, a large, rectangular, brick building with cupola and flagstaff, perhaps the public school or the bank or the Odd Fellows' Hall. Nearer by were fields and corners of pasture land, with here and there the formless shapes of drowsing cows. One of these, as Lloyd watched, changed position, and she could almost hear the long, deep breath that accompanied the motion. Far off, miles upon miles, so it seemed, a rooster was crowing at exact intervals. All at once, and close at hand, another answered—a gay, brisk carillon that woke the echoes in an instant. For the first time Lloyd noticed a pale, dim belt of light low in the east.

Toward eight o'clock in the morning the doctor came to relieve her, and while he was examining the charts and she was making her report for the night the housekeeper announced breakfast.

"Go down to your breakfast, Miss Searight," said the doctor. "I'll stay here the while. The housekeeper will show you to your room."

But before breakfasting Lloyd went to the room the housekeeper had set apart for her—a different one than had been occupied by either of the previous nurses—changed her dress, and bathed her face and hands in a disinfecting solution. When she came out of her room the doctor met her in the hall; his hat and stick were in his hand. "He has gone to sleep," he informed her, "and is resting quietly. I am going to get a mouthful of fresh air along the road. The housekeeper is with him. If he wakes she'll call you. I will not be gone fifteen minutes. I've not been out of the house for five days, and there's no danger."

Breakfast had been laid in what the doctor spoke of as the glass-room. This was an enclosed veranda, one side being of glass and opening by French windows directly upon a little lawn that sloped away under the apple-trees to the road. It was a charming apartment, an idea of a sister of Dr. Pitts, who at one time had spent two years at Medford. Lloyd breakfasted here alone, and it was here that Bennett found her.

The one public carriage of Medford, a sort of four-seated carryall, that met all the trains at the depot, had driven to the gate at the foot of the yard, and had pulled up, the horses reeking and blowing. Even before it had stopped, a tall, square-shouldered man had alighted, but it was not until he was half-way up the gravel walk that Lloyd had recognised him. Bennett caught sight of her at the same moment, and strode swiftly across the lawn and came into the breakfast-room by one of the open French windows. At once the room seemed to shrink in size; his first step upon the floor—a step that was almost a stamp, so eager it was, so masterful and resolute—set the panes of glass jarring in their frames. Never had Bennett seemed more out of place than in this almost dainty breakfast-room, with its small, feminine appurtenances, its fragile glassware, its pots of flowers and growing plants. The incongruous surroundings emphasized his every roughness, his every angularity. Against its background of delicate, mild tints his figure loomed suddenly colossal; the great span of his chest and shoulders seemed never so huge. His face; the great, brutal jaw, with its aggressive, bullying, forward thrust; the close-gripped lips, the contracted forehead, the small eyes, marred with the sharply defined cast, appeared never so harsh, never so massive, never so significant of the resistless, crude force of the man, his energy, his overpowering determination. As he towered there before her, one hand gripped upon a chair-back, it seemed to her that the hand had but to close to crush the little varnished woodwork to a splinter, and when he spoke Lloyd could imagine that the fine, frail china of the table vibrated to the deep-pitched bass of his voice.

Lloyd had only to look at him once to know that Bennett was at the moment aroused and agitated to an extraordinary degree. His face was congested and flaming. Under his frown his eyes seemed flashing veritable sparks; his teeth were set; in his temple a vein stood prominent and throbbing. But Lloyd was not surprised. Bennett had, no doubt, heard of Ferriss's desperate illness. Small wonder he was excited when the life of his dearest friend was threatened. Lloyd could ignore her own quarrel with Bennett at such a moment.

"I am so sorry," she began, "that you could not have known sooner. But you remember you left no address. There was—"

"What are you doing here?" he broke in abruptly. "What is the use—why—" he paused for a moment to steady his voice—"you can't stay here," he went on. "Don't you know the risk you are running? You can't stay here another moment."

"That," answered Lloyd, smiling, "is a matter that is interesting chiefly to me. I suppose you know that, Mr. Bennett."

"I know that you are risking your life and—"

"And that, too, is my affair."

"I have made it mine," he responded quickly. "Oh," he exclaimed sharply, striking the back of the chair with his open palm, "why must we always be at cross-purposes with each other? I'm not good at talking. What is the use of tangling ourselves with phrases? I love you, and I've come out here to ask you, to beg you, you understand, to leave this house, where you are foolishly risking your life. You must do it," he went on rapidly. "I love you too well. Your life is too much to me to allow you to hazard it senselessly, foolishly. There are other women, other nurses, who can take your place. But you are not going to stay here."

Lloyd felt her indignation rising.

"This is my profession," she answered, trying to keep back her anger. "I am here because it is my duty to be here." Then suddenly, as his extraordinary effrontery dawned upon her, she exclaimed, rising to her feet: "Do I need to explain to you what I do? I am here because I choose to be here. That is enough. I don't care to go any further with such a discussion as this."

"You will not leave here, then?"

"No."

Bennett hesitated an instant, searching for his words, then:

"I do not know how to ask favours. I've had little experience in that sort of thing. You must know how hard it is for me, and you must understand to what lengths I am driven then, when I entreat you, when I beg of you, as humbly as it is possible for me to do so, to leave this house, now—at once. There is a train to the City within the hour; some one else can take your place before noon. We can telegraph; will you go?"

"You are absurd."

"Lloyd, can't you see; don't you understand? It's as though I saw you rushing toward a precipice with your eyes shut."

"My place is here. I shall not leave."

But Bennett's next move surprised her. His eagerness, his agitation left him upon the instant He took out his watch.

"I was wrong," he said quietly. "The next train will not go for an hour and a quarter. There is more time than I supposed." Then, with as much gentleness as he could command, he added: "Lloyd, you are going to take that train?"

"Now, you are becoming a little more than absurd," she answered. "I don't know, Mr. Bennett, whether or not you intend to be offensive, but I think you are succeeding rather well. You came to this house uninvited; you invade a gentleman's private residence, and you attempt to meddle and to interfere with me in the practice of my profession. If you think you can impress me with heroics and declamation, please correct yourself at once. You have only succeeded in making yourself a little vulgar."

"That may be true or not," he answered with an indifferent movement of his shoulders. "It is all one to me. I have made up my mind that you shall leave this house this morning, and believe me, Miss Searight, I shall carry my point."

For the moment Lloyd caught her breath. For the moment she saw clearly with just what sort of man she had to deal. There was a conviction in his manner—now that he had quieted himself—that suddenly appeared unanswerable. It was like the slow, still moving of a piston.

But the next moment her own character reasserted itself. She remembered what she was herself. If he was determined, she was obstinate; if he was resolved, she was stubborn; if he was powerful, she was unyielding. Never had she conceded her point before; never had she allowed herself to be thwarted in the pursuance of a course she believed to be right. Was she, of all women, to yield now? The consciousness of her own power of resistance came suddenly to her aid. Bennett was strong, but was she not strong herself? Where under the blue sky was the power that could break down her will? When death itself could not prevail against her, what in life could shake her resolution?

Suddenly the tremendous import of the moment, the magnitude of the situation, flashed upon Lloyd. Both of them had staked everything upon this issue. Two characters of extraordinary power clashed violently together. There was to be no compromise, no half-measures. Either she or Bennett must in the end be beaten. One of them was to be broken and humbled beyond all retrieving. There in that commonplace little room, with its trivial accessories, its inadequate background, a battle royal swiftly prepared itself. With the abruptness of an explosion the crisis developed.

"Do I need to tell you," remarked Bennett, "that your life is rather more to me than any other consideration in the world? Do you suppose when the lives of every member of my command depended upon me I was any less resolved to succeed than I am now? I succeeded then, and I shall succeed now, now when there is much more at stake. I am not accustomed to failure, and I shall not fail now. I assure you that I shall stop at nothing."

It was beyond Lloyd to retain her calmness under such aggression. It seemed as though her self-respect demanded that she should lose her temper.

"And you think you can drive me as you drove your deck-hands?" she exclaimed. "What have you to do with me? Am I your subordinate? Do you think you can bully me? We are not in Kolyuchin Bay, Mr. Bennett."

"You're the woman I love," he answered with an abrupt return of vehemence, "and, by God! I shall stop at nothing to save your life."

"And my love for you, that you pretend is so much to you, I suppose that this is the means you take to awaken it. Admitting, for the moment, that you could induce me to shirk my duty, how should I love you for it? Ask yourself that."

But Bennett had but one answer to all her words. He struck his fist into the palm of his hand as he answered:

"Your life is more to me than any other consideration."

"But my life—how do you know it is a question of my life? Come, if we are to quarrel, let us quarrel upon reasonable grounds. It does not follow that I risk my life by staying—"

"Leave the house first; we can talk of that afterward."

"I have allowed you to talk too much already," she exclaimed angrily. "Let us come to the bottom of things at once. I will not be influenced nor cajoled nor bullied into leaving my post. Now, do you understand? That is my final answer. You who were a commander, who were a leader of men, what would you have done if one of your party had left his post at a time of danger? I can tell you what you would have done—you would have shot him, after first disgracing him, and now you would disgrace me. Is it reasonable? Is it consistent?"

Bennett snapped his fingers.

"That for consistency!"

"And you would be willing to disgrace me—to have me disgrace myself?"

"Your life—" began Bennett again.

But suddenly Lloyd flashed out upon him with: "My life! My life! Are there not some things better than life? You, above all men, should understand that much. Oh, be yourself, be the man I thought you were. You have your code; let me have mine. You could not be what you are, you could not have done what you did, if you had not set so many things above merely your life. Admit that you could not have loved me unless you believed that I could do the same. How could you still love me if you knew I had failed in my duty? How could you still love me if you knew that you had broken down my will? I know you better than you know yourself. You loved me because you knew me to be strong and brave and to be above petty deceptions and shams and subterfuges. And now you ask me to fail, to give up, to shirk, and you tell me you do so because you love me."

"That is all so many words to me. I cannot argue with you, and there is no time for it. I did not come here to—converse."

Never in her life before had Lloyd been so angry as at that moment. The sombre crimson of her cheeks had suddenly given place to an unwonted paleness; even her dull-blue eyes, that so rarely sparkled, were all alight. She straightened herself.

"Very well, then," she answered quietly, "our conversation can stop where it is. You will excuse me, Mr. Bennett, if I leave you. I have my work to do."

Bennett was standing between her and the door. He did not move. Very gravely he said:

"Don't. Please don't bring it—to that."

Lloyd flashed a look at him, her eyes wide, exclaiming:

"You don't mean—you don't dare—"

"I tell you again that I mean to carry my point."

"And I tell you that I shall not leave my patient."

Bennett met her glance for an instant, and, holding her gaze with his, answered but two words. Speaking in a low voice and with measured slowness, he said:

"You—shall."

There was a silence. The two stood there, looking straight into one another's eyes, their mutual opposition at its climax. The seconds began to pass. The conflict between the man's aggression and the woman's resistance reached its turning point. Before another word should be spoken, before the minute should pass, one of the two must give ground.

And then it was that Lloyd felt something breakdown within her, something to which she could not put a name. A mysterious element of her character, hitherto rigid and intact, was beginning at last to crumble. Somewhere a breach had been opened; somewhere the barrier had been undermined. The fine steadfastness that was hers, and that she had so dearly prized, her strength in which she had gloried, her independence, her splendid arrogant self-confidence and conscious power seemed all at once to weaken before this iron resolve that shut its ears and eyes, this colossal, untutored, savage intensity of purpose.

And abruptly her eyes were opened, and the inherent weakness of her sex became apparent to her. Was it a mistake, then? Could not a woman be strong? Was her strength grafted upon elemental weakness—not her individual weakness, but the weakness of her sex, the intended natural weakness of the woman? Had she built her fancied impregnable fortress upon sand?

But habit was too strong. For an instant, brief as the opening and shutting of an eye, a vision was vouchsafed to her, one of those swift glimpses into unplumbed depths that come sometimes to the human mind in the moments of its exaltation, but that are gone with such rapidity that they may not be trusted. For an instant Lloyd saw deep down into the black, mysterious gulf of sex—down, down, down where, immeasurably below the world of little things, the changeless, dreadful machinery of Life itself worked, clashing and resistless in its grooves. It was a glimpse fortunately brief, a vision that does not come too often, lest reason, brought to the edge of the abyss, grow giddy at the sight and, reeling, topple headlong. But quick the vision passed, the gulf closed, and she felt the firm ground again beneath her feet.

"I shall not," she cried.

Was it the same woman who had spoken but one moment before? Did her voice ring with the same undaunted defiance? Was there not a note of despair in her tones, a barely perceptible quaver, the symbol of her wavering resolve? Was not the very fact that she must question her strength proof positive that her strength was waning?

But her courage was unshaken, even if her strength was breaking. To the last she would strive, to the end she would hold her forehead high. Not till the last hope had been tried would she acknowledge her defeat.

"But in any case," she said, "risk is better than certainty. If I risk my life by staying, it is certain that he will die if I leave him at this critical moment."

"So much the worse, then—you cannot stay."

Lloyd stared at him in amazement.

"It isn't possible; I don't believe you can understand. Do you know how sick he is? Do you know that he is lying at the point of death at this very moment, and that the longer I stay away from him the more his life is in peril? Has he not rights as well as I; has he not a right to live? It is not only my own humiliation that is at stake, it is the life of your dearest friend, the man who stood by you, and helped you, and who suffered the same hardships and privations as yourself."

"What's that?" demanded Bennett with a sudden frown.

"If I leave Mr. Ferriss now, if he is left alone here for so much as half an hour, I will not answer—"

"Ferriss! What are you talking about? What is your patient's name?"

"Didn't you know?"

"Ferriss! Dick Ferriss! Don't tell me it's Dick Ferriss."

"I thought all the time you knew—that you had heard. Yes, it is Mr. Ferriss."

"Is he very sick? What is he doing out here? No, I had not heard; nobody told me. Pitts was to write—to—to wire. Will he pull through? What's the matter with him? Is it he who had typhoid?"

"He is very dangerously ill. Dr. Pitts brought him here. This is his house. We do not know if he will get well. It is only by watching him every instant that we can hope for anything. At this moment there is no one with him but a servant. Now, Mr. Bennett, am I to go to my patient?"

"But—but—we can get some one else."

"Not before three hours, and it's only the truth when I tell you he may die at any minute. Am I to go?"

In a second of time the hideous situation leaped up before Bennett's eyes. Right or wrong, the conviction that Lloyd was terribly imperilling her life by remaining at her patient's bedside had sunk into his mind and was not to be eradicated. It was a terror that had gripped him close and that could not be reasoned away. But Ferriss? What of him? Now it had brusquely transpired that his life, too, hung in the balance. How to decide? How to meet this abominable complication wherein he must sacrifice the woman he so dearly loved or the man who was the Damon to his Pythias, the Jonathan to his David?

"Am I to go?" repeated Lloyd for the third time.

Bennett closed his eyes, clasping his head with both hands.

"Great God, wait—wait—I can't think—I—I, oh, this is terrible!"

Lloyd drove home her advantage mercilessly.

"Wait? I tell you we can't wait."

Then Bennett realised with a great spasm of horror that for him there was no going back. All his life, accustomed to quick decisions in moments of supreme peril, he took his decision now, facing, with such courage as he could muster, its unspeakable consequences, consequences that he knew must harry and hound him all the rest of his life. Whichever way he decided, he opened his heart to the beak and talons of a pitiless remorse. He could no longer see, in the dreadful confusion of his mind, the right of things or the wrong of things, could not accurately weigh chances or possibilities. For him only two alternatives presented themselves, the death of Ferriss or the death of Lloyd. He could see no compromise, could imagine no escape. It was as though a headsman with ready axe stood at his elbow, awaiting his commands. And, besides all this, he had long since passed the limit—though perhaps he did not know it himself—where he could see anything but the point he had determined to gain, the goal he had determined to reach. His mind was made up. His furious energy, his resolve to conquer at all costs, had become at last a sort of directed frenzy. The engine he had set in motion was now beyond his control. He could not now—whether he would or no—reverse its action, swerve it from its iron path, call it back from the monstrous catastrophe toward which it was speeding him.

"God help us all!" he muttered.

"Well," said Lloyd expectantly.

Bennett drew a deep breath, his hands falling helplessly at his sides. In a way he appeared suddenly bowed; the great frame of bone and sinew seemed in some strange, indefinable manner to shrink, to stagger under the sudden assumption of an intolerable burden—a burden that was never to be lifted.

Even then, however, Bennett still believed in the wisdom of his course, still believed himself to be right. But, right or wrong, he now must go forward. Was it fate, was it doom, was it destiny?

Bennett's entire life had been spent in the working out of great ideas in the face of great obstacles; continually he had been called upon to overcome enormous difficulties with enormous strength. For long periods of time he had been isolated from civilisation, had been face to face with the simple, crude forces of an elemental world—forces that were to be combated and overthrown by means no less simple and crude than themselves. He had lost the faculty, possessed, no doubt, by smaller minds, of dealing with complicated situations. To resort to expedients, to make concessions, was all beyond him. For him a thing was absolutely right or absolutely wrong, and between the two there was no gradation. For so long a time had he looked at the larger, broader situations of life that his mental vision had become all deformed and confused. He saw things invariably magnified beyond all proportion, or else dwarfed to a littleness that was beneath consideration. Normal vision was denied him. It was as though he studied the world through one or the other ends of a telescope, and when, as at present, his emotions were aroused, matters were only made the worse. The idea that Ferriss might recover, though Lloyd should leave him at this moment, hardly presented itself to his mind. He was convinced that if Lloyd went away Ferriss would die; Lloyd had said as much herself. The hope that Lloyd might, after all, nurse him through his sickness without danger to herself was so remote that he did not consider it for one instant. If Lloyd remained she, like the other nurse, would contract the disease and die.

These were the half-way measures Bennett did not understand, the expedients he could no longer see. It was either Lloyd or Ferriss. He must choose between them.

Bennett went to the door of the room, closed it and leaned against it.

"No," he said.

Lloyd was stricken speechless. For the instant she shrank before him as if from a murderer. Bennett now knew precisely the terrible danger in which he left the man who was his dearest friend. Would he actually consent to his death? It was almost beyond belief, and for the moment Lloyd herself quailed before him. Her first thoughts were not of herself, but of Ferriss. If he was Bennett's friend he was her friend too. At that very moment he might be dying for want of her care. She was fast becoming desperate. For the moment she could put all thought of herself and of her own dignity in the background.

"What is it you want?" she cried. "Is it my humiliation you ask? Well, then, you have it. It is as hard for me to ask favours as it is for you. I am as proud as you, but I entreat you, you hear me, as humbly as I can, to let me go. What do you want more than that? Oh, can't you understand? While we talk here, while you keep me here, he may be dying. Is it a time for arguments, is it a time for misunderstandings, is it a time to think of ourselves, of our own lives, our own little affairs?" She clasped her hands. "Will you please—can I, can I say more than that; will you please let me go?"

"No."

With a great effort Lloyd tried to regain her self-control. She paused a moment, then:

"Listen!" she said. "You say that you love me; that I am more to you than even Mr. Ferriss, your truest friend. I do not wish to think of myself at such a time as this, but supposing that you should make me—that I should consent to leave my patient. Think of me then, afterward. Can I go back there to the house, the house that I built? Can I face the women of my profession? What would they think of me? What would my friends think of me—I who have held my head so high? You will ruin my life. I should have to give up my profession. Oh, can't you see in what position you would place me?" Suddenly the tears sprang to her eyes. "No!" she cried vehemently. "No, no, no, I will not, I will not be disgraced!"

"I have no wish to disgrace you," answered Bennett. "It is strange for you to say that to me, if I love you so well that I can give up Ferriss for—"

"Then, if you love me so much as that, there must be one thing that you would set even above my life. Do you wish to make me hate you?"

"There is nothing in the world more to me than your life; you know that. How can you think it of me?"

"Because you don't understand—because you don't know that—oh, that I love you! I—no—I didn't mean—I didn't mean—"

What had she said? What had happened? How was it that the words that yesterday she would have been ashamed to so much as whisper to herself had now rushed to her lips almost of their own accord? After all those years of repression, suddenly the sweet, dim thought she had hidden in her secretest heart's heart had leaped to light and to articulate words. Unasked, unbidden, she had told him that she loved him. She, she had done this thing when, but a few moments before, her anger against him had shaken her to her very finger-tips. The hot, intolerable shame of it smote like fire into her face. Her world was cracking about her ears; everything she had prized the dearest was being torn from her, everything she had fancied the strongest was being overthrown. Had she, she who had held herself so proud and high, come at last to this?

Swiftly she turned from him and clasped her hands before her eyes and sank down into the chair she had quitted, bowing her head upon her arms, hiding her face, shutting herself from the light of day, quivering and thrilling with an agony of shame and with an utter, an abject self-contempt that was beyond all power of expression. But the instant she felt Bennett's touch upon her shoulder she sprang up as if a knife had pierced her, and shrank from him, turning her head away, her hand, palm outward, before her eyes.

"Oh, please!" she begged piteously, almost inarticulately in the stress of her emotion, "don't—if you are a man—don't take advantage—please, please don't touch me. Let me go away."

She was talking to deaf ears. In two steps Bennett had reached her side and had taken her in his arms. Lloyd could not resist. Her vigour of body as well as of mind was crushed and broken and beaten down; and why was it that in spite of her shame, that in spite of her unutterable self-reproach, the very touch of her cheek upon his shoulder was a comfort? Why was it that to feel herself carried away in the rush of this harsh, impetuous, masculine power was a happiness? Why was it that to know that her prided fortitude and hitherto unshaken power were being overwhelmed and broken with a brutal, ruthless strength was an exultation and a glory? Why was it that she who but a moment before quailed from his lightest touch now put her arms about his neck and clung to him with a sense of protection and of refuge, the need of which she had always and until that very moment disdained?

"Why should you be sorry because you spoke?" said Bennett. "I knew that you loved me and you knew that I loved you. What does it matter if you said it or did not say it? We know each other, you and I. We understand. You knew that I loved you. You think that I have been strong and determined, and have done the things I set out to do; what I am is what you made me. What I have done I have done because I thought you would approve. Do you think I would have come back if I had not known that I was coming back to you?" Suddenly an impatient exclamation escaped him, and his clasp about her tightened. "Oh! words—the mere things that one can say, seem so pitiful, so miserably inadequate. Don't you know, can't you feel what you are to me? Tell me, do you think I love you?"

But she could not bear to meet his glance just yet. Her eyes were closed, and she could only nod her head.

But Bennett took her head in both his hands and turned her face to his. Even yet she kept her eyes closed.

"Lloyd," he said, and his voice was almost a command; "Lloyd, look at me. Do you love me?"

She drew a deep breath. Then her sweet dull-blue eyes opened, and through the tears that brimmed them and wet her lashes she looked at him and met his glance fearlessly and almost proudly, and her voice trembled and vibrated with an infinite tenderness as she answered:

"I do love you, Ward; love you with all my heart."

Then, after a pause, she said, drawing a little from him and resting a hand upon either shoulder:

"But listen, dear; we must not think of ourselves now. We must think of him, so sick and weak and helpless. This is a terrible moment in our lives. I don't know why it has come to us. I don't know why it should all have happened as it has this morning. Just a few moments ago I was angry as I never was in my life before—and at you—and now it seems to me that I never was so happy; I don't know myself any more. Everything is confused; all we can do is to hold to what we know is right and trust that everything will be well in the end. It is a crisis, isn't it? And all our lives and all our happiness depend upon how we meet it. I am all different now. I am not the woman I was a half-hour ago. You must be brave for me now, and you must be strong for me and help me to do my duty. We must live up to the best that is in us and do what we think is right, no matter what risks we run, no matter what the consequences are. I would not have asked you to help me before—before what has happened—but now I need your help. You have said I helped you to be brave; help me to be brave now, and to do what I know is right."

But Bennett was still blind. If she had been dear to him before, how doubly so had she become since she had confessed her love for him! Ferriss was forgotten, ignored. He could not let her go, he could not let her run the slightest risk. Was he to take any chance of losing her now? He shook his head.

"Ward!" she exclaimed with deep and serious earnestness. "If you do not wish me to risk my life by going to my post, be careful, oh, be very careful, that you do not risk something that is more to us both than life itself, by keeping me from it. Do you think I could love you so deeply and so truly as I do if I had not kept my standards high; if I had not believed in the things that were better than life, and stronger than death, and dearer to me than even love itself? There are some things I cannot do: I cannot be false, I cannot be cowardly, I cannot shirk my duty. Now I am helpless in your hands. You have conquered, and you can do with me as you choose. But if you make me do what is false, and what is cowardly, and what is dishonourable; if you stand between me and what I know is my duty, how can I love you, how can I love you?"

Persistently, perversely, Bennett stopped his ears to every consideration, to every argument. She wished to hazard her life. That was all he understood.

"No, Lloyd," he answered, "you must not do it."

"—and I want to love you," she went on, as though she had not heard. "I want you to be everything to me. I have trusted you so long—had faith in you so long, I don't want to think of you as the man who failed me when I most needed his help, who made me do the thing that was contemptible and unworthy. Believe me," she went on with sudden energy, "you will kill my love for you if you persist."

But before Bennett could answer there was a cry.

"It is the servant," exclaimed Lloyd quickly. "She has been watching—there in the room with him."

"Nurse—Miss Searight," came the cry, "quick—there is something wrong—I don't know—oh, hurry!"

"Do you hear?" cried Lloyd. "It is the crisis—he may be dying. Oh, Ward, it is the man you love! We can save him." She stamped her foot in the frenzy of her emotion, her hands twisting together. "I will go. I forbid you to keep—to hinder—to—to, oh, what is to become of us? If you love me, if you love him—Ward, will you let me go?"

Bennett put his hands over his ears, his eyes closed. In the horror of that moment, when he realised that no matter how he might desire it he could not waver in his resolution, it seemed to him that his reason must give way. But he set his back to the door, his hand gripped tight upon the knob, and through his set teeth his answer came as before:

"No."

"Nurse—Miss Searight, where are you? Hurry, oh, hurry!"

"Will you let me go?"

"No."

Lloyd caught at his hand, shut so desperately upon the knob, striving to loosen his clasp. She hardly knew what she was doing; she threw her arms about his neck, imploring, commanding, now submissive, now imperious, her voice now vibrating with anger, now trembling with passionate entreaty.

"You are not only killing him, you are killing my love for you; will you let me go—the love that is so dear to me? Let me love you, Ward; listen to me; don't make me hate you; let me love you, dear—"

"Hurry, oh, hurry!"

"Let me love you; let him live. I want to love you. It's the best happiness in my life. Let me be happy. Can't you see what this moment is to mean for us? It is our happiness or wretchedness forever. Will you let me go?"

"No."

"For the last time, Ward, listen! It is my love for you and his life. Don't crush us both—yes, and yourself. You who can, who are so powerful, don't trample all our happiness under foot."

"Hurry, hurry; oh, will nobody come to help?"

"Will you let me go?"

"No."

Her strength seemed all at once to leave her. All the fabric of her character, so mercilessly assaulted, appeared in that moment to reel, topple, and go crashing to its wreck. She was shattered, broken, humbled, and beaten down to the dust. Her pride was gone, her faith in herself was gone, her fine, strong energy was gone. The pity of it, the grief of it; all that she held dearest; her fine and confident steadfastness; the great love that had brought such happiness into her life—that had been her inspiration, all torn from her and tossed aside like chaff. And her patient—Ferriss, the man who loved her, who had undergone such suffering, such hardship, who trusted her and whom it was her duty to nurse back to life and health—if he should perish for want of her care, then what infinite sorrow, then what endless remorse, then what long agony of unavailing regret! Her world, her universe grew dark to her; she was driven from her firm stand. She was lost, she was whirled away—away with the storm, landmarks obliterated, lights gone; away with the storm; out into the darkness, out into the void, out into the waste places and wilderness and trackless desolation.

"Hurry, oh, hurry!"

It was too late. She had failed; the mistake had been made, the question had been decided. That insensate, bestial determination, iron-hearted, iron-strong, had beaten down opposition, had carried its point. Life and love had been crushed beneath its trampling without pity, without hesitation. The tragedy of the hour was done; the tragedy of the long years to come was just beginning.

Lloyd sank down in the chair before the table, and the head that she had held so high bowed down upon her folded arms. The violence of her grief shook her from head to foot like a dry, light reed. Her heart seemed literally to be breaking. She must set her teeth with all her strength to keep from groaning aloud, from crying out in her hopeless sorrow her impotent shame and despair.

Once more came the cry for help. Then the house fell silent. The minutes passed. But for Lloyd's stifled grief there was no sound. Bennett—leaning heavily against the door, his great shoulders stooping and bent, his face ashen, his eyes fixed—did not move. He did not speak to Lloyd. There was no word of comfort he could address to her—that would have seemed the last mockery. He had prevailed, as he knew he should, as he knew he must, when once his resolve was taken. The force that, once it was unleashed, was beyond him to control, had accomplished its purpose. His will remained unbroken; but at what cost? However, that was for future consideration. The costs? Had he not his whole life before him in which to count them? The present moment still called upon him to act. He looked at his watch.

The next quarter of an hour was all a confusion to him. Its incidents refused to define themselves upon his memory when afterward he tried to recall them. He could remember, however, that when he helped Lloyd into the carryall that was to take her to the depot in the village she had shrunk from his touch and had drawn away from him as if from a criminal—a murderer. He placed her satchel on the front seat with the driver, and got up beside the driver himself. She had drawn her veil over her face, and during the drive sat silent and motionless.

"Can you make it?" asked Bennett of the driver, watch in hand. The time was of the shortest, but the driver put the whip to his horses and, at a run, they reached the railway station a few moments ahead of time. Bennett told the driver to wait, and while Lloyd remained in her place he bought her ticket for the City. Then he went to the telegraph office and sent a peremptory despatch to the house on Calumet Square.

A few moments later the train had come and gone, an abrupt eruption of roaring iron and shrieking steam. Bennett was left on the platform alone, watching it lessen to a smoky blur where the rails converged toward the horizon. For an instant he stood watching, watching a resistless, iron-hearted force whirling her away, out of his reach, out of his life. Then he shook himself, turning sharply about.

"Back to the doctor's house, now," he commanded the driver; "on the run, you understand."

But the other protested. His horses were all but exhausted. Twice they had covered that distance at top speed and under the whip. He refused to return. Bennett took the young man by the arm and lifted him from his seat to the ground. Then he sprang to his place and lashed the horses to a gallop.

When he arrived at Dr. Pitts's house he did not stop to tie the horses, but threw the reins over their backs and entered the front hall, out of breath and panting. But the doctor, during Bennett's absence, had returned, and it was he who met him half-way up the stairs.

"How is he?" demanded Bennett. "I have sent for another nurse; she will be out here on the next train. I wired from the station."

"The only objection to that," answered the doctor, looking fixedly at him, "is that it is not necessary. Mr. Ferriss has just died."



VII.

Throughout her ride from Medford to the City it was impossible for Lloyd, so great was the confusion in her mind, to think connectedly. She had been so fiercely shocked, so violently shattered and weakened, that for a time she lacked the power and even the desire to collect and to concentrate her scattering thoughts. For the time being she felt, but only dimly, that a great blow had fallen, that a great calamity had overwhelmed her, but so extraordinary was the condition of her mind that more than once she found herself calmly awaiting the inevitable moment when the full extent of the catastrophe would burst upon her. For the moment she was merely tired. She was willing even to put off this reaction for a while, willing to remain passive and dizzied and stupefied, resigning herself helplessly and supinely to the swift current of events.

Yet while that part of her mind which registered the greater, deeper, and more lasting impressions remained inactive, the smaller faculty, that took cognisance of the little, minute-to-minute matters, was as busy and bright as ever. It appeared that the blow had been struck over this latter faculty, and not, as one so often supposes, through it. She seemed in that hour to understand the reasonableness of this phenomenon, that before had always appeared so inexplicable, and saw how great sorrow as well as great joy strikes only at the greater machinery of the brain, overpassing and ignoring the little wheels and cogs, that work on as briskly as ever in storm or calm, being moved only by temporary and trivial emotions and impressions.

So it was that for upward of an hour while the train carried her swiftly back to the City, Lloyd sat quietly in her place, watching the landscape rushing past her and cut into regular divisions by the telegraph poles like the whirling pictures of a kinetoscope. She noted, and even with some particularity, the other passengers—a young girl in a smart tailor-made gown reading a book, cutting the leaves raggedly with a hairpin; a well-groomed gentleman with a large stomach, who breathed loudly through his nose; the book agent with his oval boxes of dried figs and endless thread of talk; a woman with a little boy who wore spectacles and who was continually making unsteady raids upon the water-cooler, and the brakeman and train conductor laughing and chatting in the forward seat.

She took an interest in every unusual feature of the country through which the train was speeding, and noted each stop or increase of speed. She found a certain diversion, as she had often done before, in watching for the mile-posts and in keeping count of the miles. She even asked the conductor at what time the train would reach the City, and uttered a little murmur of vexation when she was told that it was a half-hour late. The next instant she was asking herself why this delay should seem annoying to her. Then, toward the close of the afternoon, came the City itself. First a dull-gray smudge on the horizon, then a world of grimy streets, rows of miserable tenements festooned with rags, then a tunnel or two, and at length the echoing glass-arched terminal of the station. Lloyd alighted, and, remembering that the distance was short, walked steadily toward her destination till the streets and neighbourhood became familiar. Suddenly she came into the square. Directly opposite was the massive granite front of the agency. She paused abruptly. She was returning to the house after abandoning her post. What was she to say to them, the other women of her profession?

Then all at once came the reaction. Instantly the larger machinery of the mind resumed its functions, the hurt of the blow came back. With a fierce wrench of pain, the wound reopened, full consciousness returned. Lloyd remembered then that she had proved false to her trust at a moment of danger, that Ferriss would probably die because of what she had done, that her strength of will and of mind wherein she had gloried was broken beyond redemption; that Bennett had failed her, that her love for him, the one great happiness of her life, was dead and cold and could never be revived, and that in the eyes of the world she stood dishonoured and disgraced.

Now she must enter that house, now she must face its inmates, her companions. What to say to them? How explain her defection? How tell them that she had not left her post of her own will? Lloyd fancied herself saying in substance that the man who loved her and whom she loved had made her abandon her patient. She set her teeth. No, not that confession of miserable weakness; not that of all things. And yet the other alternative, what was that? It could be only that she had been afraid—she, Lloyd Searight! Must she, who had been the bravest of them all, stand before that little band of devoted women in the light of a self-confessed coward?

She remembered the case of the young English woman, Harriet Freeze, who, when called upon to nurse a smallpox patient, had been found wanting in courage at the crucial moment, and had discovered an excuse for leaving her post. Miss Freeze had been expelled dishonourably from the midst of her companions. And now she, Lloyd, standing apparently convicted of the same dishonour, must face the same tribunal. There was no escape. She must enter that house, she must endure that ordeal, and this at precisely the time when her resolution had been shattered, her will broken, her courage daunted. For a moment the idea of flight suggested itself to her—she would avoid the issue. She would hide from reproach and contumely, and without further explanation go back to her place in the country at Bannister. But the little exigencies of her position made this impossible. Besides her nurse's bag, her satchel was the only baggage she had at that moment, and she knew that there was but little money in her purse.

All at once she realised that while debating the question she had been sitting on one of the benches under the trees in the square. The sun was setting; evening was coming on. Maybe if she waited until six o'clock she could enter the house while the other nurses were at supper, gain her room unobserved, then lock herself in and deny herself to all callers. But Lloyd made a weary, resigned movement of her shoulders. Sooner or later she must meet them all eye to eye. It would be only putting off the humiliation.

She rose, and, turning to the house, began to walk slowly toward it. Why put it off? It would be as hard at one time as another. But so great was her sense of shame that even as she walked she fancied that the very passers-by, the loungers on the benches around the fountain, must know that here was a disgraced woman. Was it not apparent in her very face, in the very uncertainty of her gait? She told herself she had not done wisely to sit even for a moment upon the bench she had just quitted. She wondered if she had been observed, and furtively glanced about her. There! Was not that nursemaid studying her too narrowly? And the policeman close at hand, was he not watching her quizzically? She quickened her gait, moved with a sudden impulse to get out of sight, to hide within doors—where? In the house? There where, so soon as she set foot in it, her companions, the other nurses, must know her dishonour? Where was she to go? Where to turn? What was to become of her?

But she must go to the house. It was inevitable. She went forward, as it were, step by step. That little journey across the square under the elms and cottonwoods was for her a veritable chemin de la croix. Every step was an agony; every yard covered only brought her nearer the time and place of exposure. It was all the more humiliating because she knew that her impelling motive was not one of duty. There was nothing lofty in the matter—nothing self-sacrificing. She went back because she had to go back. Little material necessities, almost ludicrous in their pettiness, forced her on.

As she came nearer she looked cautiously at the windows of the agency. Who would be the first to note her home-coming? Would it be Miss Douglass, or Esther Thielman, or Miss Bergyn, the superintendent nurse? What would first be said to her? With what words would she respond? Then how the news of the betrayal of her trust would flash from room to room! How it would be discussed, how condemned, how deplored! Not one of the nurses of that little band but would not feel herself hurt by what she had done—by what she had been forced to do. And the news of her failure would spread to all her acquaintances and friends throughout the City. Dr. Street would know it; every physician to whom she had hitherto been so welcome an aid would know it. In all the hospitals it would be a nine days' gossip. Campbell would hear of it, and Hattie.

All at once, within thirty feet of the house, Lloyd turned about and walked rapidly away from it. The movement was all but involuntary; every instinct in her, every sense of shame, brusquely revolted. It was stronger than she. A power, for the moment irresistible, dragged her back from that doorway. Once entering here, she left all hope behind. Yet the threshold must be crossed, yet the hope must be abandoned.

She felt that if she faced about now a second time she would indeed attract attention. So, while her cheeks flamed hot at the meanness, the miserable ridiculousness of the imposture, she assumed a brisk, determined gait, as though she knew just where she were going, and, turning out of the square down a by-street, walked around the block, even stopping once or twice before a store, pretending an interest in the display. It seemed to her that by now everybody in the streets must have noted that there was something wrong with her. Twice as a passer-by brushed past her she looked back to see if he was watching her. How to live through the next ten minutes? If she were only in her room, bolted in, locked and double-locked in. Why was there not some back way through which she could creep to that seclusion?

And so it was that Lloyd came back to the house she had built, to the little community she had so proudly organised, to the agency she had founded, and with her own money endowed and supported.

At last she found herself at the bottom of the steps, her foot upon the lowest one, her hand clasping the heavy bronze rail. There was no going back now. She went up and pushed the button of the electric bell, and then, the step once taken, the irrevocable once dared, something like the calmness of resignation came to her. There was no help for it. Now for the ordeal. Rownie opened the door for her with a cheery welcome. Lloyd was dimly conscious that the girl said something about her mail, and that she was just in time for supper. But the hall and stairway were deserted and empty, while from the dining-room came a subdued murmur of conversation and the clink of dishes. The nurses were at supper, as Lloyd had hoped. The moment favoured her, and she brushed by Rownie, and almost ran, panic-stricken and trembling, up the stairs.

She gained the hall of the second floor. There was the door of her room standing ajar. With a little gasp of infinite relief, she hurried to it, entered, shut and locked and bolted it behind her, and, casting her satchel and handbag from her, flung herself down upon the great couch, and buried her head deep among the cushions.

At Lloyd's abrupt entrance Miss Douglass turned about from the book-shelves in an angle of the room and stared a moment in no little surprise. Then she exclaimed:

"Why, Lloyd, why, what is it—what is the matter?"

Lloyd sprang up sharply at the sound of her voice, and then sank down to a sitting posture upon the edge of the couch. Quietly enough she said:

"Oh, is it you? I didn't know—expect to find any one—"

"You don't mind, do you? I just ran in to get a book—something to read. I've had a headache all day, and didn't go down to supper."

Lloyd nodded. "Of course—I don't mind," she said, a little wearily.

"But tell me," continued the fever nurse, "whatever is the matter? When you came in just now—I never saw you so—oh, I understand, your case at Medford—"

Lloyd's hands closed tight upon the edge of the couch.

"No one could have got a patient through when the fever had got as far as that," continued the other. "This must have been the fifth or sixth week. The second telegram came just in time to prevent my going. I was just going out of the door when the boy came with it."

"You? What telegram?" inquired Lloyd.

"Yes, I was on call. The first despatch asking for another extra nurse came about two o'clock. The four-twenty was the first train I could have taken—the two-forty-five express is a through train and don't stop at Medford—and, as I say, I was just going out of the door when Dr. Pitts's second despatch came, countermanding the first, and telling us that the patient had died. It seems that it was one of the officers of the Freja expedition. We didn't know—"

"Died?" interrupted Lloyd, looking fixedly at her.

"But Lloyd, you mustn't take it so to heart. You couldn't have got him through. No one could at that time. He was probably dying when you were sent for. We must all lose a case now and then."

"Died?" repeated Lloyd; "Dr. Pitts wired that Mr. Ferriss died?"

"Yes; it was to prevent my coming out there uselessly. He must have sent the wire quite an hour before you left. It was very thoughtful of him."

"He's dead," said Lloyd in a low, expressionless voice, looking vacantly about the room. "Mr. Ferriss is dead." Then suddenly she put a fist to either temple, horror-struck and for the moment shaken with hysteria from head to foot, her eyes widening with an expression almost of terror. "Dead!" she cried. "Oh, it's horrible! Why didn't I—why couldn't I—"

"I know just how you feel," answered Miss Douglass soothingly. "I am that way myself sometimes. It's not professional, I know, but when you have been successful in two or three bad cases you think you can always win; and then when you lose the next case you believe that somehow it must have been your fault—that if you had been a little more careful at just that moment, or done a little different in that particular point, you might have saved your patient. But you, of all people, ought not to feel like that. If you could not have saved your case nobody could."

"It was just because I had the case that it was lost."

"Nonsense, Lloyd; don't talk like that. You've not had enough sleep; your nerves have been over-strained. You're worn out and a little hysterical and morbid. Now lie down and keep quiet, and I'll bring you your supper. You need a good night's sleep and bromide of potassium."

When she had gone Lloyd rose to her feet and drew her hand wearily across her eyes. The situation adjusted itself in her mind. After the first recoil of horror at Ferriss's death she was able to see the false position in which she stood. She had been so certain already that Ferriss would die, leaving him as she did at so critical a moment, that now the sharpness of Miss Douglass's news was blunted a little. She had only been unprepared for the suddenness of the shock. But now she understood clearly how Miss Douglass had been deceived by circumstances. The fever nurse had heard of Ferriss's death early in the afternoon, and supposed, of course, that Lloyd had left the case after, and not before, it had occurred. This was the story the other nurses would believe. Instantly, in the flood of grief and remorse and humiliation that had overwhelmed her, Lloyd caught at this straw of hope. Only Dr. Pitts and Bennett knew the real facts. Bennett, of course, would not speak, and Lloyd knew that the physician would understand the cruelty and injustice of her situation, and because of that would also keep silence. To make sure of this she could write him a letter, or, better still, see him personally. It would be hard to tell him the truth. But that was nothing when compared with the world's denunciation of her.

If she had really been false to her charge, if she had actually flinched and faltered at the crucial moment, had truly been the coward, this deception which had been thrust upon her at the moment of her return to the house, this part which it was so easy to play, would have been a hideous and unspeakable hypocrisy. But Lloyd had not faltered, had not been false. In her heart of hearts she had been true to herself and to her trust. How would she deceive her companions then by allowing them to continue in the belief of her constancy, fidelity, and courage? What she hid from them, or rather what they could not see, was a state of things that it was impossible for any one but herself to understand. She could not—no woman could—bring herself to confess to another woman what had happened that day at Medford. It would be believed that she could have stayed at her patient's bedside if she had so desired. No one who did not know Bennett could understand the terrible, vast force of the man.

Try as she would, Lloyd could not but think first of herself at this moment. Bennett was ignored, forgotten. Once she had loved him, but that was all over now. The thought of Ferriss's death, for which in a manner she had been forced to be responsible, came rushing to her mind from time to time, and filled her with a horror and, at times, even a perverse sense of remorse, almost beyond words. But Lloyd's pride, her self-confidence, her strength of character and independence had been dearer to her than almost anything in life. So she told herself, and, at that moment, honestly believed. And though she knew that her pride had been humbled, it was not gone, and enough of it remained to make her desire and strive to keep the fact a secret from the world. It seemed very easy. She would only have to remain passive. Circumstances acted for her.

Miss Douglass returned, followed by Rownie carrying a tray. When the mulatto had gone, after arranging Lloyd's supper on a little table near the couch, the fever nurse drew up a chair.

"Now we can talk," she said, "unless you are too tired. I've been so interested in this case at Medford. Tell me what was the immediate cause of death; was it perforation or just gradual collapse?"

"It was neither," said Lloyd quickly. "It was a hemorrhage."

She had uttered the words with as little consciousness as a phonograph, and the lie had escaped her before she was aware. How did she know what had been the immediate cause of death? What right had she to speak? Why was it that all at once a falsehood had come so easy to her, to her whose whole life until then had been so sincere, so genuine?

"A hemorrhage?" repeated the other. "Had there been many before then? Was there coma vigil when the end came? I—"

"Oh," cried Lloyd with a quick gesture of impatience, "don't, don't ask me any more. I am tired—nervous; I am worn out."

"Yes, of course you must be," answered the fever nurse. "We won't talk any more about it."

That night and the following day were terrible. Lloyd neither ate nor slept. Not once did she set foot out of her room, giving out that she was ill, which was not far from the truth, and keeping to herself and to the companionship of the thoughts and terrors that crowded her mind. Until that day at Medford her life had run easily and happily and in well-ordered channels. She was successful in her chosen profession and work. She imagined herself to be stronger and of finer fibre than most other women, and her love for Bennett had lent a happiness and a sweetness to her life dear to her beyond all words. Suddenly, and within an hour's time, she had lost everything. Her will had been broken, her spirit crushed; she had been forced to become fearfully instrumental in causing the death of her patient—a man who loved and trusted her—while her love for Bennett, which for years had been her deep and abiding joy, the one great influence of her life, was cold and dead, and could never be revived.

This in the end came to be Lloyd's greatest grief. She could forget that she herself had been humbled and broken. Horrible, unspeakably horrible, as Ferriss's death seemed to her, it was upon Bennett, and not upon her, that its responsibility must be laid. She had done what she could. Of that she was assured. But, first and above all things, Lloyd was a woman, and her love for Bennett was a very different matter.

When, during that never-to-be-forgotten scene in the breakfast-room of the doctor's house, she had warned Bennett that if he persisted in his insane resolution he would stamp out her affection for him, Lloyd had only half believed what she said. But when at last it dawned upon her that she had spoken wiser than she knew, that this was actually true, and that now, no matter how she might desire it, she could not love him any longer, it seemed as though her heart must break. It was precisely as though Bennett himself, the Bennett she had known, had been blotted out of existence. It was much worse than if Bennett had merely died. Even then he would have still existed for her, somewhere. As it was, the man she had known simply ceased to be, irrevocably, finally, and the warmth of her love dwindled and grew cold, because now there was nothing left for it to feed upon.

Never until then had Lloyd realised how much he had been to her; how he had not only played so large a part in her life, but how he had become a very part of her life itself. Her love for him had been like the air, like the sunlight; was delicately knitted and intertwined into all the innumerable intricacies of her life and character. Literally, not an hour had ever passed that, directly or indirectly, he had not occupied her thoughts. He had been her inspiration; he had made her want to be brave and strong and determined, and it was because of him that the greater things of the world interested her. She had chosen a work to be done because he had set her an example. So only that she preserved her womanliness, she, too, wanted to count, to help on, to have her place in the world's progress. In reality all her ambitions and hopes had been looking toward one end only, that she might be his equal; that he might find in her a companion and a confidante; one who could share his enthusiasms and understand his vast projects and great aims.

And how had he treated her when at last opportunity had been given her to play her part, to be courageous and strong, to prevail against great odds, while he stood by to see? He had ignored and misunderstood, and tossed aside as childish and absurd that which she had been building up for years. Instead of appreciating her heroism he had forced her to become a coward in the eyes of the world. She had hoped to be his equal, and he had treated her as a school-girl. It had all been a mistake. She was not and could not be the woman she had hoped. He was not and never had been the man she had imagined. They had nothing in common.

But it was not easy to give Bennett up, to let him pass out of her life. She wanted to love him yet. With all her heart and strength, in spite of everything—woman that she was, she had come to that—in spite of everything she wanted to love him. Though he had broken her will, thwarted her ambitions, ignored her cherished hopes, misunderstood and mistaken her, yet, if she could, Lloyd would yet have loved him, loved him even for the very fact that he had been stronger than she.

Again and again she tried to awaken this dead affection, to call back this vanished love. She tried to remember the Bennett she had known; she told herself that he loved her; that he had said that the great things he had done had been done only with an eye to her approval; that she had been his inspiration no less than he had been hers; that he had fought his way back, not only to life, but to her. She thought of all he had suffered, of the hardships and privations beyond her imagination to conceive, that he had undergone. She tried to recall the infinite joy of that night when the news of his safe return had come to her; she thought of him at his very best—how he had always seemed to her the type of the perfect man, masterful, aggressive, accomplishing great projects with an energy and determination almost superhuman, one of the world's great men, whose name the world still shouted. She called to mind how the very ruggedness of his face; with its massive lines and harsh angles, had attracted her; how she had been proud of his giant's strength, the vast span of his shoulders, the bull-like depth of his chest, the sense of enormous physical power suggested by his every movement.

But it was all of no effect. That Bennett was worse than dead to her. The Bennett that now came to her mind and imagination was the brutal, perverse man of the breakfast-room at Medford, coarse, insolent, intractable, stamping out all that was finest in her, breaking and flinging away the very gifts he had inspired her to offer him. It was nothing to him that she should stand degraded in the eyes of the world. He did not want her to be brave and strong. She had been wrong; it was not that kind of woman he desired. He had not acknowledged that she, too, as well as he—a woman as well as a man might have her principles, her standards of honour, her ideas of duty. It was not her character, then, that he prized; the nobility of her nature was nothing to him; he took no thought of the fine-wrought texture of her mind. How, then, did she appeal to him? It was not her mind; it was not her soul. What, then, was left? Nothing but the physical. The shame of it; the degradation of it! To be so cruelly mistaken in the man she loved, to be able to appeal to him only on his lower side! Lloyd clasped her hands over her eyes, shutting her teeth hard against a cry of grief and pain and impotent anger. No, no, now it was irrevocable; now her eyes were opened. The Bennett she had known and loved had been merely a creature of her own imagining; the real man had suddenly discovered himself; and this man, in spite of herself, she hated as a victim hates its tyrant.

But her grief for her vanished happiness—the happiness that this love, however mistaken, had brought into her life—was pitiful. Lloyd could not think of it without the choke coming to her throat and the tears brimming her dull-blue eyes, while at times a veritable paroxysm of sorrow seized upon her and flung her at full length upon her couch, her face buried and her whole body shaken with stifled sobs. It was gone, it was gone, and could never be called back. What was there now left to her to live for? Why continue her profession? Why go on with the work? What pleasure now in striving and overcoming? Where now was the exhilaration of battle with the Enemy, even supposing she yet had the strength to continue the fight? Who was there now to please, to approve, to encourage? To what end the days of grave responsibilities, the long, still nights of vigil?

She began to doubt herself. Bennett, the man, had loved his work for its own sake. But how about herself, the woman? In what spirit had she gone about her work? Had she been genuine, after all? Had she not undertaken it rather as a means than as an end—not because she cared for it, but because she thought he would approve, because she had hoped by means of the work she would come into closer companionship with him? She wondered if this must always be so—the man loving the work for the work's sake; the woman, more complex, weaker, and more dependent, doing the work only in reference to the man.

But often she distrusted her own conclusions, and, no doubt, rightly so. Her mind was yet too confused to reason calmly, soberly, and accurately. Her distress was yet too keen, too poignant to permit her to be logical. At one time she was almost ready to admit that she had misjudged Bennett; that, though he had acted cruelly and unjustly, he had done what he thought was best. His sacrifice of Ferriss was sufficient guarantee of his sincerity. But this mistrust of herself did not affect her feeling toward him. There were moments when she condoned his offence; there was never an instant she did not hate him.