hree the next morning she called me
and said that I might have a chance--that he might know us for a
moment. Margarita was by the bed: her face was enough to break your
heart.

"Only a minute, Harriet--only a little minute!" she pleaded like a
baby. I don't know what insane vow I didn't offer ... He opened his
eyes and they fell on her. She put her hand on his forehead and said
very plainly.

"Listen, Roger, you must listen. It is I--Margarita, _Cherie_, you
know. Do you hear?"

His eyes looked a little conscious, and Harriet held his pulse and
slipped something into his mouth. In a moment we all knew that he knew
us.

"Now say one thing, Mrs. Bradley--quickly!" Harriet whispered.

Margarita bent like a flash and whispered in his ear very swiftly: her
whole body was tense. You should have seen his eyes--he was old Roger
again! I could see his hand press hers and she kissed him just as the
flash went by, and he took to muttering again.

Harriet pushed her away and put her hand on his forehead, then nodded
at the deaconess.

"Call the doctor!" she said sharply, and I thought it was all over....

But it was the turn, and after that by hair's breadths and hair's
breadths they pulled him over.

"Now he knows, Jerry," Margarita said to me, and went to bed herself.

It was a good week after that, when the doctor had gone and we were
all breathing naturally again, that Harriet asked me abruptly if I had
noticed Mrs. Bradley's voice. I said yes, that it was still decidedly
husky. She looked at me so sadly, so strangely, that my nerves fairly
jumped--we had all been on edge for a month--and I commanded her
rather sharply to say what she meant and be done with it.

"Is her voice injured?"

"I am afraid so, yes," she said gently.

"But surely time and rest and proper treatment," I began, but she
shook her head.

"The doctor examined her throat before he left," she said. "Of course
he had no laryngoscope with him, but he didn't need one, really. The
vocal cords are all stretched--he said the specialists might help her
and take away a great deal of the hoarseness, but that in his opinion
she can never stand the strain of public singing again: he thinks
excitement alone would paralyse the cords."

"Who's to tell her?" I said quietly.

You see, we'd all been stretched so taut that we couldn't use any more
energy in exclamations or regrets.

"I thought you might," she said, but I shook my head.

"Miss Jencks--"