way out.
Norma vaguely noted the fire, burning clear and bright, the shaded light
that showed a chart, on a cleared table, the absence of flowers and
plants that made the place seem bare. But after one general impression
her attention was riveted upon the sick woman, and with her heart
beating quickly with fright she went to stand at the foot of the great
walnut bed.

Mrs. Melrose was lying with her head tipped back in pillows; her usually
gentle, soft old face looked hard and lined, and was a dark red, and the
scanty gray hair, brushed back mercilessly from the temples, and devoid
of the usual puffs and transformations, made her look her full sixty
years. Her eyes were half-open, but she did not move them, her lips
seemed very dry, and occasionally she muttered restlessly, and a third
nurse, bending above her, leaned anxiously near, to catch what she
said, and perhaps murmur a soothing response.

This nurse looked sharply at Norma, and breathed rather than whispered:
"Mrs. Sheridan?" and when Norma answered with a nod, nodded herself in
satisfaction.

"She's been asking and asking for you," she said, in a low clear tone
that oddly broke the unnatural silence of the room. Norma, hearing a
stir behind her, looked back to see that both doctors had come over to
the bed, and were looking down at their patient with a profound concern
that their gray heads and their big spectacles oddly emphasized.

"Mrs. Sheridan?" one of them questioned. Norma dared not use her voice,
and nodded again. Immediately the doctor leaned over Mrs. Melrose, and
said in a clear and encouraging tone: "Here is Mrs. Sheridan now!"

Mrs. Melrose merely moaned heavily in answer, and Norma said softly, to
the doctor who had spoken:

"I think perhaps she was asking for my aunt--who is also Mrs. Sheridan!"

Before the doctor, gravely considering, could answer, the sick woman
startled them all by saying, almost fretfully, in a surprisingly clear
and quiet voice:

"No--no--no, I want you, Norma!"

She groped blindly about with her hand, as she spoke, and Norma kneeled
down, and covered it with both her own. Mrs. Melrose immediately began
to breathe more easily, and sank at once into the stupor from which she
had only momentarily roused.

Norma looked for instruction to the doctor, who presently decided that
there was nothing more to be gained for a time; she joined them
presently, with Chris, in the adjoining room. This was the same old room
of