hat someone was praying, and then, with a
thrill of horror, she knew otherwise. The voice was uttering the most
fearful curses she had ever heard.

Scarcely knowing what she did, but unable to stand there passively
listening, she drew aside the canvas flap and looked in.

In an instant the voice ceased. There fell a silence, followed by a
wild, half-strangled cry. She had a glimpse of a prone figure in a
corner struggling upwards, and then Curtis was before her--Curtis
haggard and agitated as she had never seen him--pushing her back out of
the dim place into the clean starlight without.

"Mrs. Mercer! Are you mad?" she heard him say.

She resisted his compelling hands; she was strangely composed and
undismayed.

"I am coming in," she said. "Nothing on earth will keep me back. That
man--Robin Wentworth--is a friend of mine. I am going to see him and
speak to him."

"Impossible!" Curtis said.

But she withstood him unfalteringly.

"It is not impossible. You must let me pass. I mean to go to him, and
you cannot prevent it."

He saw the hopelessness of opposing her. Her eyes told him that it was
no whim but steadfast purpose that had brought her there. He looked
beyond her to Beelzebub, but gathered no inspiration in that quarter.

"Let me pass, Mr. Curtis!" said Sybil gently. "I shall take no harm. I
must see him before he dies."

And Curtis yielded. He was worn out by long and fruitless watching, and
he could not cope with this fresh emergency. He yielded to her
insistence, and suffered her to pass him.

"He is very far gone," he said.

XIV

As Sybil entered she heard again that strange, choked cry. The sick man
was struggling to rise, but could not.

She went straight to the narrow pallet on which he lay and bent over
him.

"Robin!" she said.

He gave a great start, and became intensely still, lying face downwards,
his body twisted, his head on his arm.

She stooped lower. She touched him. A superhuman strength was hers.

"Robin," she said, "do you know me?"

He turned his face a little, and she saw the malignant horror of the
disease that gripped him. It was a sight that would have turned her sick
at any other time. But to-night she knew no weakness.

"Who are you?" he said, in a gasping whisper.

"I am Sybil," she answered steadfastly. "Don't you remember me?"

He lay motionless for a little, his breathing sharp and short. At
length:

"You had better get away from this pestilent