, sternly, settling her wig. "You are mad, you
need not be bad as well. But it's my own fault for giving you that
brandy. You know as well as I do that I hate men--nasty, selfish,
guzzling, conceited, guffawing brutes! I never wanted to speak to a man
in my life, except in the way of business."

Milly waved her amber head gracefully for a moment as though at a loss,
then returned playfully, "That must be because the women spoil you so."

Tims smiled sardonically; but regaining her sense of the situation, out
of which she had been momentarily shocked, applied herself to the
problem of calling back poor Milly's wandering mind.

"Sit down, my girl," she said, abruptly, putting her arm around Milly's
body, so soft and slender in the scanty folds of the blue dressing-gown.
Milly obeyed precipitately. Then drawing a small chair close to her,
Tims said in gentle tones which could hardly have been recognized as
hers:

"M., darling, do you know where you are?"

Milly turned on her a face from which the unnatural vivacity had fallen
like a mask; the appealing face of a poor lost child.

"Am I--am I--in a _maison de sante_?" she asked tremulously, fixing her
blue eyes on Tims, full of piteous anxiety.

"A lunatic asylum? Certainly not," replied Tims. "Now don't begin
crying again, old girl. That's how the trouble began."

"Was it?" asked Milly, dreamily. "I thought it was--" she paused,
frowning before her in the air, as though trying to pursue with her
bodily vision some recollection which had flickered across her
consciousness only to disappear.

"Well, never mind that now," said Tims, hastily; "get your bearings
right first. You're in Ascham College."

"A College!" repeated Milly vaguely, but in a moment her face
brightened, "I know. A place of learning where they have professors and
things. Are you a professor?"

"No, I'm a student. So are you."

Milly looked fixedly at Tims, then smiled a melancholy smile. "I see,"
she said, "we're both studying--medicine--medicine for the mind." She
stood up, locked her hands behind her head in her soft hair and wailed
miserably. "Oh, why won't some kind person come and tell me where I am,
and what I was before I came here?"

Tears of wounded feelings sprang to Tims's eyes. "Milly, my beauty!" she
cried despairingly, "I'm trying to be kind to you and tell you
everything you want to know. Your name is Mildred Flaxman and you used
to live in Oxford here, but now all your people