errified group, in the
doorway. John's head, heavy, with shut eyes, was on her shoulder;
John's limp body was in her arms. They were telling her that this was
the bottle he had emptied, and that he was dead.

II

It was a miracle that they had got her husband to the hospital alive,
the doctors told Margaret, late that night. His life could be only a
question of moments. It was extraordinary that he should live through
the night, they told her the next morning; but it could not last more
than a few hours now. It was impossible for John Kirby to live, they
said; but John Kirby lived.

He lived, to struggle through agonies undreamed of, back to days of new
pain. There were days and weeks and months when he lay, merely
breathing, now lightly, now just a shade more deeply.

There came a day when great doctors gathered about him to exult that he
undoubtedly, indisputably winced when the hypodermic needle hurt him.
There was a great day, in late summer, when he muttered something. Then
came relapses, discouragements, the bitter retracing of steps.

On Christmas Day he opened his eyes, and said to the grave, thin woman
who sat with her hand in his:

"Margaret!"

He slipped off again too quickly to know that she had broken into tears
and fallen on her knees beside him.

After a while he sat up, and was read to, and finally wept because the
nurses told him that some day he would want to get up and walk about
again. His wife came every day, and he clung to her like a child.
Sometimes, watching her, a troubled thought would darken his eyes; but
on a day when they first spoke of the terrible past, she smiled at him
the motherly smile that he was beginning so to love, and told him that
all business affairs could wait. And he believed her.

One glorious spring afternoon, when the park looked deliriously fresh
and green from the hospital windows, John received permission to extend
his little daily walk beyond the narrow garden. With an invalid's
impatience, he bemoaned the fact that his wife would not be there that
day to accompany him on his first trip into the world.

His nurse laughed at him.

"Don't you think you're well enough to go and make a little call on
Mrs. Kirby?" she suggested brightly. "She's only two blocks away, you
know. She's right here on Madison Avenue. Keep in the sunlight and walk
slowly, and be sure to come back before it's cold, or I'll send the
police after you."

Thus warned, John started