she answered heavily. "It means that there isn't any other way.
Hurry! Get these things off! Get me dressed!"

But it took a long time. Gypsy Nan seemed with every moment to grow
weaker. The lamp on the chair went out for want of oil. There was only
the guttering candle in the gin bottle to give light. It threw weird,
flickering shadows around the garret; it seemed to enhance the already
deathlike pallor of the woman, as, using the pitcher of water and the
basin from the washstand now, Rhoda Gray removed the grime from Gypsy
Nan's face and hands.

It was done at last--and where there had once been Gypsy Nan, haglike
and repulsive, there was now a stylishly, even elegantly, dressed woman
of well under middle age. The transformation seemed to have acted as
a stimulant upon Gypsy Nan. She laughed with nervous hilarity she even
tried valiantly to put on a pair of new black kid gloves, but, failing
in this, pushed them unsteadily into the pocket of her coat.

"I'm--I'm all right," she asserted fiercely, as Rhoda Gray, pausing in
the act of gathering up the discarded garments, regarded her anxiously.
"Bring me a package of that money after you've put those things
away--yes, and you'll find a flashlight there. We'll need it going down
the stairs."

Rhoda Gray made no answer. There was no hesitation now in her actions,
as, to the pile of clothing in her arms, she added the revolver that lay
on the blanket, and, returning to the little trap-door in the ceiling,
hid them away; but her brain was whirling again in a turmoil of doubt.
This was madness, utter, stark, blind madness, this thing that she was
doing! It was suicide, literally that, nothing less than suicide for
one in Gypsy Nan's condition to attempt this thing. But the woman would
certainly die here, too, with out medical assistance--only there was the
police! Rhoda Gray's face, as she stood upright in the little aperture
again, throwing the wavering candle-rays around her, seemed suddenly
to have grown pinched and wan. The police! The police! It was her
conscience, then, that was gnawing at her--because of the police!
Was that it? Well, there was also, then, another side. Could she turn
informer, traitor, become a female Judas to a dying woman, who had
sobbed and thanked her Maker because she had found some one whom she
believed she could trust? That was a hideous and an abominable thing to
do! "You swore it! You swore you'd see me through!"--the words came
and rang