's sake."

So earnest was his enthusiasm that Rachel felt herself lifted up by it,
in spite of her discomforts. But then she turned her eyes away from his
impassioned face, and looked over the array of white beds, each with its
pale and haggard occupant, his eyes blazing with the delirium of fever,
or closed in the langor of exhaustion, with limbs tossing as the febrile
fire seethed the blood, or quivering with the last agonies. Groans,
prayers, and not a few oaths fell on her ears. The repulsive smell of
the disinfectants, the nauseating odor of the sick room where hundreds
of invalids were lying, the horrible effluvia of the typhus rose on the
hot air, and seemed part of the misery which so strongly assailed her
other senses.

She was sick at heart, and with every feeling in active revolt, but
without a word she turned and followed Dr. Denslow to a hot, close,
little room which had been cut off one end of the hospital, though not
so separated from it but that the sounds and odors from the sick wards
continually filtered in through the wide cracks in its plank sides.
An iron bedstead, of the same pattern as that upon which the sick lay,
stood in one corner, and in another was a rudely-fashioned stand, upon
which was a tin-basin, a cake of yellow bar-soap, and a bucket of water
for washing. This was all the furniture.

As the door closed behind the Doctor, Rachel threw herself upon the
cot, in a fit of despair at the wreck of all her fancies, and the
repulsiveness of the career upon which she had embarked.

"I can not--I will not--live here a week," she said to herself, over and
over again. "I will die for the lack of comforts--of the decencies of
life, even--to say nothing of being poisoned by these horrible smells,
or driven distracted by the raving sick and that boor of a Surgeon. But
I can not draw back; I would rather die than go back to Sardis with
a confession of failure at the very outset of my attempt to play the
heroine."

Then she remembered her last words to Harry Glen: "I only know that you
have failed where a number of commonplace men have succeeded, and that
is sufficient."

Would she subject herself to having him throw these words in her teeth?
No. Any shape of trial and death, rather.

Chapter XV. Making an Acquaintance with Duty.

And with light in her looks she entered the chamber of sickness.
Noiselessly moved about the assiduous, careful attendants,
Moistening the feverish lip