manner. It was the perfection of collected independence. The strength
of her nature had come to surface because the obscure depths had been
stirred.

"We two can talk of it now," she observed, after a silence and stopping
short before me. "Have you been to inquire at the hospital lately?"

"Yes, I have." And as she looked at me fixedly, "He will live, the
doctors say. But I thought that Tekla...."

"Tekla has not been near me for several days," explained Miss Haldin
quickly. "As I never offered to go to the hospital with her, she thinks
that I have no heart. She is disillusioned about me."

And Miss Haldin smiled faintly.

"Yes. She sits with him as long and as often as they will let her," I
said. "She says she must never abandon him--never as long as she lives.
He'll need somebody--a hopeless cripple, and stone deaf with that."

"Stone deaf? I didn't know," murmured Natalia Haldin.

"He is. It seems strange. I am told there were no apparent injuries to
the head. They say, too, that it is not very likely that he will live so
very long for Tekla to take care of him."

Miss Haldin shook her head.

"While there are travellers ready to fall by the way our Tekla shall
never be idle. She is a good Samaritan by an irresistible vocation. The
revolutionists didn't understand her. Fancy a devoted creature like that
being employed to carry about documents sewn in her dress, or made to
write from dictation."

"There is not much perspicacity in the world."

No sooner uttered, I regretted that observation. Natalia Haldin, looking
me straight in the face, assented by a slight movement of her head. She
was not offended, but turning away began to pace the room again. To my
western eyes she seemed to be getting farther and farther from me, quite
beyond my reach now, but undiminished in the increasing distance. I
remained silent as though it were hopeless to raise my voice. The sound
of hers, so close to me, made me start a little.

"Tekla saw him picked up after the accident. The good soul never
explained to me really how it came about. She affirms that there was
some understanding between them--some sort of compact--that in any sore
need, in misfortune, or difficulty, or pain, he was to come to her."

"Was there?" I said. "It is lucky for him that there was, then. He'll
need all the devotion of the good Samaritan."

It was a fact that Tekla, looking out of her window at five in the
morning, for some reason or other, had