sickening to see
her terror at the thought of death. Poor, desperate creature."

"Yet you withheld her message when I might have comforted her?"

"It was a crazy whim. In hardened cases like hers, death-bed remorse
counts for very little. Her conscience is lashing her; could you quiet
that? Could you bleach out the blood that spots her soul?"

"Yes, by leading her to One who can."

"Remember, you asked me as a special favor to keep you as far apart as
possible from all of her class."

"At that time, overwhelmed by the misery of my own fate, I was pitiless
to the sufferings of others. The rod that smote me was very cruel then;
but by degrees it seems to bud like Aaron's with precious promise, that
may expand into the immortal flowers of souls redeemed. I dwelt too
long in the seat of the Pharisees; I shall live closer to God, walking
humbly among the Publicans. Will you show me the way to the woman who
wishes to see me?"

"Not yet. There are some instructions that must be carefully weighed
before I can install you as nurse, in that dismal mire of moral and
physical corruption. Singleton, send the hospital steward to me."

There are spectacles which brand themselves so ineffaceably upon
memory, that time has no power to impair their vividness; and of such
were some of the scenes witnessed by the new nurse.

Sitting on the side of her cot, from which the gray blanket had been
dragged and folded half across her shoulders, where one hand held it,
while the other clutched savagely at her throat; with her bare delicate
feet beating a tattoo on the white sanded floor, and her thin nostrils
dilated in the battle for breath, Iva Le Bougeois moaned in abject
terror. The coarse, unbleached "domestic" night-gown that fell to her
ankles was streaked across the bosom with some dark brown fluid; and
similar marks stained the pillow where her restless head had tossed.
The hot eyes and parched red lips seemed to have drained all the
tainted blood from her olive cheeks, save where, just beneath the lower
lids, ominous terra-cotta rings had been painted and glazed by the
disease.

As Beryl pushed open the iron door, and held up the lantern, that its
brightness might stream into the cell, where even at five o'clock in
the afternoon of a rainy day darkness reigned, the rays flashed back
from the glowing eyes chatoyant as a cougar's.

"Your message was not delivered until to-day, and I lost no time in
coming."

The small head, w