edside of the sick;--and had she not been a deep reader of
the human soul she would have left his presence in simple wonder at his
skill and entire absorption in an exacting profession.

But as it was, she carried with her an image of subdued suffering, which
drove her, from that moment on, to ask herself what she could do to aid
him in his fight against his own illusion; for to associate such a man
with a senseless and cruel murder was preposterous.

What this wish, helped by no common determination, led her into, it was
not in her mind to conceive. She was making her one great mistake, but
as yet she was in happy ignorance of it, and pursued the course laid out
for her without a doubt of the ultimate result.

Having seen and made up her mind about the husband, she next sought to
see and gauge the wife. That she succeeded in doing this by means of
one of her sly little tricks is not to the point; but what followed in
natural consequence is very much so. A mutual interest sprang up between
them which led very speedily to actual friendship. Mrs. Zabriskie's
hungry heart opened to the sympathetic little being who clung to her in
such evident admiration; while Violet, brought face to face with a real
woman, succumbed to feelings which made it no imposition on her part to
spend much of her leisure in Zulma Zabriskie's company.

The result were the following naive reports which drifted into her
employer's office from day to day, as this intimacy deepened.

The doctor is settling into a deep melancholy, from which he tries to
rise at times, but with only indifferent success. Yesterday he rode
around to all his patients for the purpose of withdrawing his services
on the plea of illness. But he still keeps his office open, and today
I had the opportunity of witnessing his reception and treatment of the
many sufferers who came to him for aid. I think he was conscious of
my presence, though an attempt had been made to conceal it. For the
listening look never left his face from the moment he entered the room,
and once he rose and passed quickly from wall to wall, groping with
out-stretched hands into every nook and corner, and barely escaping
contact with the curtain behind which I was hidden. But if he suspected
my presence, he showed no displeasure at it, wishing perhaps for a
witness to his skill in the treatment of disease.

And truly I never beheld a finer manifestation of practical insight
in cases of a more or less baf