to be observed toward her, as any other must be equally cruel
and offensive. Her bodily health certainly required the attendance of a
physician, and Traverse had therefore a fair excuse for his daily
visits to her cell.

His respectful manners, his grave bow, and his reverential tone in
saying--

"I hope I find you stronger to-day, Madam," seemed to gratify one who
had few sources of pleasure.

"I thank you," she would answer, with a softened tone and look, adding,
"Yes" or "No," as the truth might be.

One day, after looking at the young physician some time, she suddenly
said:

"You never forget. You always address me by my proper title of Madam,
and without the touch of irony which others indulge in when 'humoring'
me, as they call it! Now, pray explain to me why, in sober earnest, you
give me this title?"

"Because, Madam, I have heard you lay claim to that title, and I think
that you yourself, of all the world, have the best right to know how
you should be addressed," said Traverse, respectfully.

The lady looked wistfully at him and said:

"But my next-door neighbor asserts that she is a queen; she insists
upon being called 'your majesty.' Has she, then, the best right to know
how she should be addressed?"

"Alas! no, Madam, and I am pained that you should do yourself the great
wrong to draw such comparisons."

"Why? Am not I and the 'queen' inmates of the same ward of incurables,
in the same lunatic asylum?"

"Yes, but not with equal justice of cause. The 'queen' is a hopelessly
deranged, but happy lunatic. You, Madam, are a lady who has retained
the full possession of your faculties amid circumstances and
surroundings that must have overwhelmed the reason of a weaker mind."

The lady looked at him in wonder and almost in joy.

"Ah! it was not the strength of my mind; it was the strength of the
Almighty upon whom my mind was stayed, for time and for eternity, that
has saved my reason in all these many years! But how did you know that
I was not mad? How do you know that this is anything more than a lucid
interval of longer duration than usual?" she asked.

"Madam, you will forgive me for having looked at you so closely, and
watched you so constantly, but I am your physician, you know----"

"I have nothing to forgive and much to thank you for, young man. You
have an honest, truthful, frank, young face! the only one such that I
have seen in eighteen years of sorrow! But why, then, did you not
bel