gained courage and acquitted herself
creditably, at least, so she flattered herself, for she could detect, as
she looked up from time to time, no expression other than pleasure on
his face. It may be surmised, though, that Johnson had not merely chosen
a page at random; on the contrary, when the book was in his hand he had
quickly found the lines which the Girl had, so to say, paraphrased, and
he was intensely curious to see how they would appeal to her. But now,
apparently, she saw nothing in the least amusing in them, nor in other
passages fully as sentimental. In fact, no comment of any kind was
forthcoming from her--though Johnson was looking for it and, to tell the
truth, was somewhat disappointed--when she read that Dante had probably
never spoken more than twice to Beatrice and his passion had no other
food than the mists of his own dreaming. However, it was different
when,--pausing before each word after the manner of a child,--she came
to a passage of the poet's, and read:

"'In that moment I say most truly that the spirit of life, which hath
its dwelling in the most secret chambers of the heart, began to tremble
so violently that the least pulse of my body shook herewith, and in the
trembling it said these words: "Here is a deity stronger than I who,
coming shall rule over me."'"

At that the Girl let the book fall and, going down on her knees and
taking both his hands in hers, she raised to him a look so full of
adoring worship that he felt himself awed before it.

"That 'ere Dante ain't so far off after all. I know jest how he feels.
Oh, I ain't fit to read to you, to talk to you, to kiss you."

Nevertheless, he saw to it that she did.

After this he told her about the Inferno, and she listened eagerly to
his description of the unfortunate characters, though she declared, when
he explained some of the crimes that they had committed, that they "Got
only what was rightly comin' to them."

The patient could hardly suppress his amusement. Dante was discarded and
instead they told each other how much love there was in that little
cabin on Cloudy Mountain.

The days that followed were all much like this one. Food was brought up
from The Polka and, by degrees, the patient's strength came back. And it
was but natural that he became so absorbed in his newly-found happiness
that he gradually was losing all sense of danger. Late one night,
however, when he was asleep, an incident happened that warned the Girl
t