ot look at
her with reproach or with sorrow, but, it seemed, with terror, a wild,
infectious terror; Milly felt it seize her as she stood, spellbound, by
the door. Then a rush of immense pity and comprehension shook her
through and through. Christina was dying, delirious, and what must she
be feeling in her haunted abandonment and desolation? She ran to the bed
weeping. She knelt beside it. Her tears rained upon Christina's hands,
as she took her in her arms and kissed her. "Christina!--dearest
Christina!--Forgive me! Forgive me!--I did not know!--Why did you not
let me come and nurse you?--I have always nursed you! Why did you not
tell me?--Oh, Christina!"

Holding her, kissing her, she could not see clearly the illumination
that, at her words, illuminated the dying woman's face. Life seemed
suddenly to leap to her eyes and lips. The terror vanished like a ghost
in the uprising of morning sunlight. With a rapture of hope and yearning
which resumed all her ebbing power, physical and spiritual, she
stretched out her arms and clasped them about Milly's neck. "Do you
love me again?" she asked. Her voice was like a child's in its ecstasy.

"My darling Christina!--Love you?--Who is there in all the world but
you!" Milly cried. No affirmation could be too strong, she felt, no
atonement too great.

"Better than you love him?"

Milly did not even hesitate. Lies were like obstacles hardly seen as, in
the onrush of her remorse and pity, she leaped them.--"Yes,--Yes. You
are everything," she reiterated. "I love you best. It has passed--that
feeling."

"It has passed! I knew that it would pass!" Christina seemed to gasp and
smile at once. "You know, now, that it was not right;--that it was not
you;--that it was an illness;--something that would pass?--You see it
too, Milly?--And you will be happy with me again?"

"Yes, yes, dearest Christina."

Still smiling, Christina closed her eyes and Milly laid her back upon
her pillows. Her fingers closed tightly on Milly's hand. "It has
passed," she said. "It could not have been right. You were everything to
me. And he could not have seen the pictures, the jewels, Milly; or heard
the music."

"No, dear, no." Milly covered her own eyes. Ah!--those cravings to
which Christina had responded;--now so dead.

"I shall get better," said Christina. "I feel it now; I know it. I shall
get better and be always with you. My darling. My Milly. My little
Milly." Her voice had sunken to a shrou