hen that a great steamer passed, and as she
would have mounted the stairs to the yacht's deck an unexpected swell
from the passing steamer smote the stairs so violently that Ethel was
thrown back into the boat she had just left, with an ankle crushed under
her own weight.

The girl realized that it was badly sprained. She gave orders that she
should be carried on board the yacht forthwith. She decided then that
she would send home for whatever might be needed--and, too, for the
family physician.

With the assistance of the caretaker she managed to reach her cabin, and
then sent the fellow to bring the physician in all haste. She pulled off
her outer garments and donned a kimono, and crawled into her berth, to
await the Doctor's coming.

It was within the hour that the little tender came back toward the
yacht, carrying a passenger.

This was Doctor Gifford Garnet, the family physician. He hurried up the
companion way, and went at once to his patient's stateroom. A very short
examination sufficed. He saw the girl was suffering excruciating pain
from the injury to her ankle.

The physician himself was a victim of morphia. And, too, he was a man of
imagination--a most dangerous quality in one of his profession. Now, as
he regarded the girl, he realized the intense suffering caused to her by
the wrenched tendons in the ankle. That thought of suffering sickened
his sensitive nature, so that he felt an emotion almost of nausea from
the pain he knew her to be enduring.... And he was a coward. Pain had
come to him often. Because he was a coward, he had fled from
it--interposing morphia as a shield against its attack. So, now, in
sympathy for the anguish endured by the girl he turned to the drug to
give her relief from suffering. He made an injection into Ethel's
arm.... The girl watched his movement with listless eyes. Then she
sighed and smiled as she felt the gentle sting of the needle. At once
she sank into an untroubled sleep.

Dr. Garnet regarded her for a moment with a curiously contemplative
stare. Then he grinned grimly, pulled up his coat and shirt-sleeve, and
pressed the piston of the hypodermic, driving a heavier charge of the
drug into his own blood.

One minute he spent in deft examination of the injured ankle, then
bandaged it. Afterward, he left the girl, and went up on deck, where he
stood staring through long minutes toward the fleecy masses of cumulus
clouds that lay along the New Jersey horizon.