lieve she is
living. She knows I believe it. . . . As you sat here, a moment
ago, reading to me, I saw her reflected for a moment in the mirror
behind you, passing into the room beyond. Her hair is perfectly
white, Celia--or," he said vaguely to himself, "was it something
she wore?--like the bandeaux of the Sisters of Charity----"

The lighted candle fell from Celia's nerveless fingers and rolled
over and over across the floor, trailing a smoking wick. Berkley's
hand steadied her trembling arm.

"Why are you frightened?" he asked calmly.

"There is nothing dead about what I saw."

"I c-can't he'p myse'f," stammered Celia; "you say such frightful
things to me--you tell me that they happen in my own house--in
_her_ own room--How can I be calm? How can I believe such things
of--of Constance Berkley--of yo' daid mother----"

"I don't know," he said dully.

The star-light sparkled on the silver candle-stick where it lay on
the floor in a little pool of wax. Quivering all over, Celia
stooped to lift, relight it, and set it on the table. And, over
her shoulder, he saw a slim shape enter the doorway.

"Mother dear?" he whispered.

And Celia turned with a cry and stood swaying there in the rays of
the candle.

But it was only a Sister of Charity--a slim, childish figure under
the wide white head-dress--who had halted, startled at Celia's cry.
She was looking for the Division Medical Director, and the sentries
had misinformed her--and she was very sorry, very deeply distressed
to have frightened anybody--but the case was urgent--a Sister shot
near the picket line on Monday; and authority to send her North
was, what she had come to seek. Because the Sister had lost her
mind completely, had gone insane, and no longer knew them, knew
nobody, not even herself, nor the hospital, nor the doctors, nor
even that she lay on a battle-field. And she was saying strange
and dreadful things about herself and about people nobody had ever
heard of. . . . Could anybody tell her where the Division Medical
Director could be found?

It was not yet daybreak when Berkley awoke in his bed to find
lights in the room and medical officers passing swiftly hither and
thither, the red flames from their candles blowing smokily in the
breezy doorways.

The picket firing along the river had not ceased. At the same
instant he felt the concussion of heavy guns shaking his bed. The
lawn outside the drawn curtains resounded with the hu