remained to make her
desire and strive to keep the fact a secret from the world. It seemed
very easy. She would only have to remain passive. Circumstances acted
for her.

Miss Douglass returned, followed by Rownie carrying a tray. When the
mulatto had gone, after arranging Lloyd's supper on a little table near
the couch, the fever nurse drew up a chair.

"Now we can talk," she said, "unless you are too tired. I've been so
interested in this case at Medford. Tell me what was the immediate cause
of death; was it perforation or just gradual collapse?"

"It was neither," said Lloyd quickly. "It was a hemorrhage."

She had uttered the words with as little consciousness as a phonograph,
and the lie had escaped her before she was aware. How did she know what
had been the immediate cause of death? What right had she to speak? Why
was it that all at once a falsehood had come so easy to her, to her
whose whole life until then had been so sincere, so genuine?

"A hemorrhage?" repeated the other. "Had there been many before then?
Was there coma vigil when the end came? I--"

"Oh," cried Lloyd with a quick gesture of impatience, "don't, don't ask
me any more. I am tired--nervous; I am worn out."

"Yes, of course you must be," answered the fever nurse. "We won't talk
any more about it."

That night and the following day were terrible. Lloyd neither ate nor
slept. Not once did she set foot out of her room, giving out that she
was ill, which was not far from the truth, and keeping to herself and to
the companionship of the thoughts and terrors that crowded her mind.
Until that day at Medford her life had run easily and happily and in
well-ordered channels. She was successful in her chosen profession and
work. She imagined herself to be stronger and of finer fibre than most
other women, and her love for Bennett had lent a happiness and a
sweetness to her life dear to her beyond all words. Suddenly, and within
an hour's time, she had lost everything. Her will had been broken, her
spirit crushed; she had been forced to become fearfully instrumental in
causing the death of her patient--a man who loved and trusted her--while
her love for Bennett, which for years had been her deep and abiding joy,
the one great influence of her life, was cold and dead, and could never
be revived.

This in the end came to be Lloyd's greatest grief. She could forget that
she herself had been humbled and broken. Horrible, unspeakably horrible,
as Fe