gathered about the
patients they had come to see, telling them family news and encouraging
them. Sometimes the voices were choked with tears, though the eyes were
dry, Jack heard a constant murmur of voices, and the perfume of oranges
filled the room. But what a disappointment it was, after being lifted by
the aid of a little stick hung by cords, when he saw that his mother had
not come! He fell back more exhausted, more despairing than ever.

With him, as with all others who are on the threshold of death, the
slender thread of life that remained to him was too fragile to attach
itself to the robust years of his manhood, and took him beyond them into
the far away days when he was little Jack, the velvet-clad darling of
Ida de Barancy.

The crowd still came, women and little children, who stood in displeased
surprise at their father's emaciation and at his nightcap, and uttered
exclamations of delight at the sight of the beautifully dressed altar.
But Jack's mother did not appear. Madame Belisaire knows not what to
say. She has hinted that M. D'Argenton may be ill, or that his mother is
driving in the Bois, and now she spreads a colored handkerchief on her
knees and pares an orange.

"She will not come!" said Jack. These very words he had spoken in that
little home at Charonne which he had prepared with so much tender
care. But his voice was now weaker, and had even a little anger in its
accents. "She will not come!" he repeated; and the poor boy closed
his eyes, but not in sleep. He thought of Cecile. The sister heard his
sighs, and said to Madame Belisaire, whose large face was shining with
tears,--

"What is the matter with him? I am afraid he is suffering more."

"It is on account of his mother, whom he expects, and he is troubled
that she does not come."

"But she must be sent for."

"My husband went long ago. But she is a fine lady; she won't come to a
hospital and run the risk of soiling her silk skirts."

Suddenly the woman rose in a fit of anger.

"Don't cry, dear," said she to Jack, as she would have spoken to her
little child; "I am going for your mother."

Jack understood what she said, understood that she had gone, but still
continued to repeat, in a harsh voice, the words, "She will not come!
she will not come!"

The sister tried to soothe him. "Calm yourself, my child."

Then Jack rose in a sort of delirium. "I tell you she will not come.
You do not know her, she is a heartless mother; all t