"In a short time a poor woman who is nursing at the Gilsey House
will be here. She is on duty until twelve o'clock, but as soon as
she is released she promised to come and sit with me. So you must
leave me now, Roland. It is useless to explain to my neighbours our
relationship. They would look at you and me and think evilly. I would
not blame them if they did. When all is over I will come to you;
until then I will remain alone. It is best so."

Nevertheless Roland lingered and pleaded, and when he finally
consented to her wish, he left all the money he had in her hands. She
looked at the bills with a sad despair. "All these!" she whispered,
"all these for a grave and a coffin! There was nothing at all to help
him to live."

"Nothing could have saved him, Denasia. He was born under sentence of
death. He has been ill all his poor little life. My darling, believe
that it is well with him now."

Yet her words and tears troubled him, and he bade her good-night, and
then returned so often that the woman Denasia had spoken of passed
him in the narrow entry, and he paused and watched her go to his
wife's room. Even then he did not hurry to his own home. He went down
the side street, and stood looking at the glimmering lamp in the
sorrowful place of death until he became painfully aware of the
terribly damp, cold wind searching out and chilling life, even to the
very marrow of the bones. Then he remembered that he had come out in
his dress boots, consequently his feet were wet and numb, and he had a
fierce pain under his shoulder. A sudden, uncontrollable fear went to
his heart like a death-doom.

He had to walk a long way before he found any vehicle, and when, after
what seemed a never-ending period of torture, he reached his room, he
knew that he was seriously ill. But the house had settled for the
night; he had a reluctance to awaken the servants; he hoped the warmth
would give him ease; he was, in fact, quite unacquainted with the
terrible malady which had seized him. In the morning he did not
appear, and after a short delay Mr. Lanhearne sent him a message.

Roland was, however, by this time in high fever and delirious. The
news caused a momentary hesitation and then a positive decision. The
hesitation was a natural one--"Should not the young man be sent to the
hospital?" The decision came from the cultivated humanity of a good
heart--"No. Roland was 'the stranger within the gates,' he was a
countryman, he was mor