ging for
light, I wore out the lagging hours beside my mother's bed, with very
little change in her condition to relieve the strain of my anxiety.
"Will she ever speak again? Have I heard her voice for the last time?"
These questions came again and again to my mind.

Dawn crept into the room at last, and Franklin came on the early train.
With his coming, mother regained some part of her lost courage. She grew
rapidly stronger before night came again, and was able to falter a few
words in greeting and to ask for father.

During the following day she steadily improved, and in the afternoon was
able to sit up in her bed. One of the first of her interests was a
desire to show my brother a new bonnet which I had recently purchased
for her in the city, and at her request I put it into her hands.

Her love and gratitude moved us both to tears. Her action had the
intolerable pathos of a child's weakness united with a kind of delirium.
To watch her feeble hands exhibiting a head-dress which I feared she
would never again wear--displaying it with a pitiful smile of pride and
joy--was almost more than I could bear. Her face shone with happiness as
she strove to tell my brother of the building I was doing to make her
more comfortable. "Zuleema is coming," she said. "My new daughter--is
coming."

When Franklin and I were alone for a moment, I said: "She must not die.
_I won't let her die._ She must live a little longer to enjoy the new
rooms I am building for her."

It would appear that the intensity of my desire, the power of my resolve
to bring her back to life, strengthened her, wrought upon her with
inexplicable magic, for by the time my father arrived she was able to
speak and to sit once more in her wheeled chair. She even joked with me
about "Zuleema."

"You'd better hurry," she said, and then the shadow came back upon me
with bitter chill. How insecure her hold on life had become!

Haste on the building was now imperative--so much, at least, I could
control. With one crew of carpenters, another of painters, and a third
of tinners, all working at the same time, I rushed the construction
forward. At times my action presented itself to me as a race against
death, or at least with death's messenger. What I feared, most of all,
was a sudden decline to helpless invalidism on my mother's part, a
condition in which a trained nurse would be absolutely necessary. To get
the rooms in order while yet our invalid was able to move