But the improvement was very slight, and Nell, as she watched the
wounded man, often felt a pang of dread shoot through her. Sometimes she
was assailed by the idea that Falconer was not particularly anxious to
live. When he was awake he would lie quite still, save when a spasm of
pain visited him, with his dark eyes fixed dreamily upon the window;
though when she spoke to him he invariably turned them to her with a
world of gratitude, a wealth of devotion in them.

And for the last two days the pity in Nell's tender heart had grown so
intense that it had become own brother to love itself. When a woman
knows that she can make a good man happy by just whispering "I love
you," she is sorely tempted to utter the three little pregnant words,
especially when she herself knows what it is to long for love.

She could make this man who worshiped her happy, and--and was it not
possible in doing so she might find, if not happiness, contentment for
herself?

A hundred times during the last two days she had asked herself this
question, until she had grown to desire that the answer might be in the
affirmative. Perhaps if she were betrothed to Falconer she would learn
to forget Drake, for whose voice and footstep she was always waiting.

On this afternoon, as she sat at her post, she was dwelling on the
problem, which had become almost unendurable at last, and she sighed
wearily.

Falconer awoke, as if he had heard her, and turned his eyes upon her
with the slow yet intense regard of the very weak.

"Are you there still?" he asked, in a low voice. "I thought you promised
me that, if I went to sleep, you would go out, into the garden, at
least."

"It wasn't exactly a promise. Besides, I don't think you have been
really asleep; and if you have it is not for long enough," she said,
smiling, and "hedging" in truly feminine fashion. "Are you feeling
better--not in so much pain?"

"Oh, yes," he replied. "I'm in no pain." He told the falsehood as
admirably as he managed his face when he was awake, but it gave him away
when he was asleep. "I shall be quite well presently. I wish to Heaven
they would let me be removed to the hospital!"

"That sounds rather ungrateful," said Nell, with mock indignation.
"Don't you think we are taking enough care of you?"

He sighed.

"When I lie here and think of all the trouble I've given, I sometimes
wish that that fellow's knife had found the right place. Though I
suppose they'd have hanged