at the big coal base-burner in
what was called the parlor.

"Why, Mira!" he cried. "What has happened? Are you ill?" And he bent
over as though to fold her in his arms, but she shrank away.

"Don't!" she cried. "I was frightened. You--you were gone so long. I
thought you'd never come back." Then to his utter amaze she burst into a
wild fit of hysterical weeping. "Oh, take me away,--take me away from
this dreadful place, or I shall die,--I shall die!"

CHAPTER XIV.

Mr. Davies was very late in returning to the hospital that night. For
nearly half an hour Almira sobbed and shivered and refused to be
comforted, and yet failed to explain. To his urgent plea to be told the
cause of her fright and distress she could give no intelligible reply.
"Oh, I don't know. I heard noises, or voices, or something. I was
all--all unstrung, I suppose. You--you talked to me so strangely, so
cruelly the other night, and I've--I've been thinking of it all day--all
day, and when you went away--and didn't come back, I--I thought all
sorts of things. I supposed you'd gone there, you know where,--to those
women,--those women who despise me and show it." It brought on fresh
moans and tragic wringing of hands, and new outpouring of salty tears
when he presently told her where he had been, but she would not listen
to the cause of his detention at the hospital. It was more than enough
that he had been out walking with her,--with _her_, in the dead of
night. That seemed the only fact she cared to grasp, and that she
crooned over with bitter wailing until his patience was exhausted.

"This is childish and absurd!" he said. "It is unworthy of you, my wife,
and unjust to Miss Loomis as well as unjust to me. It is not possible
that this has caused all your terror and distress. What noises--what
sounds did you hear?"

But these now she had forgotten. In the light of his confession, as she
termed it, all other calamities had faded into naught. He gradually
calmed her sufficiently to induce her to return to bed, but when he
announced that he must go again to the hospital to see how Brannan was
getting on, her lamentations were piteous. In vain he reminded her that
Brannan was her own cousin, the only son of her aunt and benefactress.
She would listen to none of it. Brannan was only an excuse to enable him
again to go and meet Miss Loomis, and finally, with white face and set,
rigid lips, Davies turned and left the house, walking rapidly to the