th with his paper lantern, repeating a cry as he
ran--warning to clear the way.

"Have the aromatic spirits of ammonia sent to Mr. Taber's room at
once," Ruth ordered. "I will administer it."

"You, Miss Enschede?"--frankly astonished that one stranger should
offer succour to another.

"There is nobody else. Someone ought to be with him until the
doctor arrives. He may die."

The manager made a negative sign. "Your worry is needless."

"It wasn't the fumes of whisky that toppled him out of his chair.
It was his heart. I once saw a man die after collapsing that way."

"You once saw a man die that way?" the manager echoed, his recent
puzzlement returning full tide. Hartford, Connecticut; she had
registered that address; but there was something so mystifyingly
Oriental about her that the address only thickened the haze behind
which she moved. "Where?"

"That can wait," she answered. "Please hurry the ammonia;" and Ruth
turned away abruptly.

Above she found the two Chinamen squatted at the side of the door.
They rose as she approached. She hastened past. She immediately
took the pillows from under the head of the man who had two names,
released the collar and tie, and arranged the arms alongside the
body. His heart was beating, but faintly and slowly, with ominous
intermissions. All alone; and nobody cared whether he lived or
died.

She was now permitted freely to study the face. The comparisons
upon which she could draw were few and confusingly new, mixed with
reality and the loose artistic conceptions of heroes in fiction.
The young male, as she had actually seen him, had been of the
sailor type, hard-bitten, primordial, ruthless. For the face under
her gaze she could find but one expression--fine. The shape of the
head, the height and breadth of the brow, the angle of the nose,
the cut of the chin and jaws, all were fine, of a type she had
never before looked upon closely.

She saw now that it was not a dissipated face; it was as smooth and
unlined as polished marble, which at present it resembled. Still,
something had marked the face, something had left an indelible
touch. Perhaps the sunken cheeks and the protruding cheekbones gave
her this impression. What reassured her, however, more than
anything else, was the shape of the mouth: it was warmly turned.
The confirmed drunkard's mouth at length sets itself peculiarly; it
becomes the mark by which thoughtful men know him. It was not in
evidence here, not