ger
face the struggle of the dawn hour, when life ebbs lowest; and since her
duties extended beyond the sick-room she could fairly plead that she was
more needed about the house by day. But Wyant protested: he wanted her
most at the difficult hour.

"You know you're taking a chance from her," he said, almost sternly.

"Oh, no----"

He looked at her searchingly. "You don't feel up to it?"

"No."

He turned away with a slight shrug; but she knew he resented her
defection.

The day watches were miserable enough. It was the nineteenth day now;
and Justine lay on the sofa in Amherst's sitting-room, trying to nerve
herself for the nurse's summons. A page torn out of the calendar lay
before her--she had been calculating again how many days must elapse
before Mr. Langhope could arrive. Ten days--ten days and ten nights! And
the length of the nights was double.... As for Amherst, it was
impossible to set a date for his coming, for his steamer from Buenos
Ayres called at various ports on the way northward, and the length of
her stay at each was dependent on the delivery of freight, and on the
dilatoriness of the South American official.

She threw down the calendar and leaned back, pressing her hands to her
temples. Oh, for a word with Amherst--he alone would have understood
what she was undergoing! Mr. Langhope's coming would make no
difference--or rather, it would only increase the difficulty of the
situation. Instinctively Justine felt that, though his heart would be
wrung by the sight of Bessy's pain, his cry would be the familiar one,
the traditional one: _Keep her alive!_ Under his surface originality,
his verbal audacities and ironies, Mr. Langhope was the creature of
accepted forms, inherited opinions: he had never really thought for
himself on any of the pressing problems of life.

But Amherst was different. Close contact with many forms of wretchedness
had freed him from the bondage of accepted opinion. He looked at life
through no eyes but his own; and what he saw, he confessed to seeing. He
never tried to evade the consequences of his discoveries.

Justine's remembrance flew back to their first meeting at Hanaford, when
his confidence in his own powers was still unshaken, his trust in others
unimpaired. And, gradually, she began to relive each detail of their
talk at Dillon's bedside--her first impression of him, as he walked down
the ward; the first sound of his voice; her surprised sense of his
authority