ose, and repeats what she catches.

"Why did Major Roper come back? He didn't, dear. He went away about
seven, and has not been here since."

"He was in the room just this minute." The voice is barely audible,
the conviction of the speaker absolute. He is wandering. The nurse's
mind decides, in an innermost recess, that it won't be very long now.

* * * * *

Rosalind looked out through a spot she had rubbed clean on the frozen
window-pane, and saw that it was bright starlight. The fog had gone.
That boy--he was asleep at the twopenny doss, and the trousers were
drying. What a good thing that he should be totally insensitive to
atmosphere, as no doubt he was.

The hardest hours for the watcher by a sick-bed are those that cannot
be convinced that they belong to the previous day. One o'clock may be
coaxed or bribed easily enough into winking at a pretence that it is
only a corollary of twelve; two o'clock protests against it audibly,
and every quarter-chime endorses its claim to be to-morrow; three
o'clock makes short work of an imposture only a depraved effrontery
can endeavour to foist upon it. Rosalind was aware of her unfitness
to sit up all night--all this next night--but nursed the pretext that
it had not come, and that it was still to-day, until a sense of the
morning chill, and something in the way the sound of each belated cab
confessed to its own scarcity, convinced her of the uselessness of
further effort. Then she surrendered the point, short of the stroke
of three, and exchanged posts with the nurse, who promised to call her
at once should it seem necessary to do so. Sleep came with a rush, and
dreamless oblivion. Then, immediately, the hand of the nurse on her
shoulder, and her voice, a sudden shock in the absolute stillness:

"I thought it better to wake you, Mrs. Nightingale. I am _so_
sorry...."

"Oh dear! how long have I slept?" Rosalind's mind leaped through a
second of unconsciousness of where she is and what it's all about to
a state of intense wakefulness. "What o'clock is it?"

"It's half-past six. I should have left you to have your sleep out,
only he wanted you.... Yes, he woke up and asked for you, and then
asked again. He's hardly coughed."

"I'll come." Rosalind tried for alacrity, but found she was quite
stiff. The fire was only a remnant of red glow that collapsed feebly
as the nurse touched it with the poker. It was a case for a couple of
little glue