ky.

"We shall do our best," he said. "You stay here till I come back!"

She let him go. Somehow that look had given her a curious shock
though she did not understand it. She heard the door shut firmly
behind him, and she huddled herself down upon the pillow and lay
still.

She wished he had not made her drink that fiery draught. All her
senses were in a tumult, and yet her body felt as if weighted with
lead. She lay listening tensely for every sound, but the silence
was like a blanket wrapped around her--a blanket which nothing
seemed to penetrate.

It seemed to overwhelm her at last, that silence, to blot out the
clamour of her straining nerves, to deprive her of the power to
think. Though she did not know it, the stress of that night's
horror and vigil had worn her out. She sank at length into a deep
sleep from which it seemed that nought could wake her. And when
more than an hour later, Burke came, treading softly, and looked
upon her, he did not need to keep that burning hunger-light out of
his eyes. For she was wholly unconscious of him as though her
spirit were in another world.

He looked and looked with a gaze that seemed as if it would consume
her. And at last he leaned over her, with arms outspread, and
touched her sunny, disordered hair with his lips. It was the
lightest touch, far too light to awaken her. But, as if some happy
thought had filtered down through the deeps of her repose, she
stirred in her sleep. She turned her face up to him with the faint
smile of a slumbering child.

"Good night!" she murmured drowsily.

Her eyes half-opened upon him. She gave him her lips.

And as he stooped, with a great tremor, to kiss them, "Good night,
dear--Guy!" Her voice was fainter, more indistinct. She sank back
again into that deep slumber from which she had barely been roused.

And Burke went from her with the flower-like memory of her kiss
upon his lips, and the dryness of ashes in his mouth.

It was several hours later that Sylvia awoke to full consciousness
and a piercing realization of a strange presence that watched by
her side.

She opened her eyes wide with a curious conviction that there was a
cat in the room, and then all in a moment she met the cool,
repellent stare of the black-browed doctor whom Burke had brought
from Ritzen.

A little quiver of repugnance went through her at the sight,
swiftly followed by a sharp thrill of indignation. What was he
doing seated th