on't be afraid."

"You speak as if you had not a particle of pity in you; you are as hard
and cold as a stone, as you always were----"

"Not always," she said, grimly--"unluckily for me."

"Any woman who had a grain of pity in her would pity me now. I feel so
frightfully bad, Marion; I believe I am going to die."

"I believe you are."

He called on the name of God at that, and tried ineffectually to rise,
and tugged frantically at the bandages which bound him. She watched
him, standing at the foot of his bed, and could smile as she watched.

"You are afraid to die," she said; "I knew you would be. You were
always a coward."

He cursed her then. His voice was feeble now; it had lost the strength
of delirium. There was something awful in the sound of such words in
such trembling, exhausted tones; yet Marion, listening, smiled on.

"I will not be nursed by you!" he cried. "I won't have you near me,
glaring at me with your Gorgon stare. Send another nurse to me--send
the doctor. Get out of my sight, Gorgon! Don't look at me. Go away!"

The door behind her had been standing a little ajar; she turned round
and shut it. The window was open to the spring air; she closed and
locked it. "Help yourself," she said.

"I'll rouse the place," he threatened, and tried to cry aloud, but his
voice died weakly in his throat. He broke down at that, and began to
whine a little.

"Have some pity," he wept. "I'm a suffering man, and you're a woman,
and I'm in your hands. It's only decent, it's only human, to be sorry
for me--to do something for me. My tongue's like leather; give me
something to drink. A drop of water, even. Why should you begrudge me a
drop of water?"

"There's none in the room," she said; "and I won't leave you to fetch
it. There's only this." She held up to his eyes the quieting mixture
the doctor had ordered. "There is only one dose, unfortunately. If the
bottle had been full, I should have given you the lot, and there would
have been no further trouble. As it is, you can drink what there is.
The time has not come round for it; but time is not going to be of much
matter to you, henceforth; we need not wait for it."

He cursed her in his fainting voice again, and again faintly struggled.
But she held the bottle steadily to his lips, and he drained it to the
last drop.

"That will quiet you," she said, and sat beside him on the bed. From
the pocket of her apron she drew the penknife with which the doctor had