into my room." Ida spoke
softly for fear of waking Evelyn, whom she had directly seen in
Maria's bed when she opened the door.

Maria sprang up, got a wrapper, put it on over her night-gown, thrust
her feet into slippers, and followed Ida across the hall. Harry lay
on the bed, seemingly unconscious.

"I can't seem to rouse him," said Ida. She spoke quite placidly.

Maria went close to her father and put her ear to his mouth. "He is
breathing," she whispered, tremulously.

Ida smiled. "Oh yes," she said. "I don't think it anything serious.
It may be indigestion."

Then Maria turned on her. "Indigestion!" she whispered. "Indigestion!
He is dying. He has been dying a long time, and you haven't had sense
enough to see it. You haven't loved him enough to see it. What made
you marry my father if you didn't love him?"

Ida looked at Maria, and her face seemed to freeze into a smiling
mask.

"He is dying!" Maria repeated, in a frenzy, yet still in a whisper.

"Dying? What do you know about it?" Ida asked, with icy emphasis.

"I know. He has seen three specialists besides the doctor here."

"And he told you instead of me?"

"He told me because he knew I loved him," said Maria. She was as
white as death herself, and she trembled from head to foot with
strange, stiff tremors. Her blue eyes fairly blazed at her
step-mother.

Suddenly the sick man began to breathe stertorously. Even Ida started
at that. She glanced nervously towards the bed. Little Evelyn, in her
night-gown, her black fleece of hair fluffing around her face like a
nimbus of shadow, came and stood in the doorway.

"What is the matter with papa?" she whispered, piteously.

"He is asleep, that is all, and breathing hard," replied her mother.
"Go back to bed."

"Go back to bed, darling," said Maria.

"What is the matter?" asked Evelyn. She burst into a low, frightened
wail.

"Go back to bed this instant, Evelyn," said her mother, and the child
fled, whimpering.

Maria stood close to her father. Ida seated herself in a chair beside
the table on which the lamp stood. Neither of them spoke again. The
dying man continued to breathe his deep, rattling breath, the breath
of one who is near the goal of life and pants at the finish of the
race. The cook, a large Irishwoman, put her face inside the door.

"The doctor is comin' right away," said she. Then in the same breath
she muttered, looking at poor Harry, "Oh, me God!" and fled,
doubtless to pray f