and smoke a cigar, and then if she hasn't had a
relapse, I think it will be safe for me to go home. You can telephone if
you need me. I am only a few blocks away." He went out with a brisk,
elastic step, while his hand began to feel for the end of the cigar in
his pocket.

"She's bad now," said the old woman. "It's the medicine, but she'll come
to in a minute." She brought two wooden chairs with broken legs to the
foot of the bed. "You'd better sit down. It may be a long waiting."

"I hope she'll know me," returned Patty. "She must have wanted to see
me, or she wouldn't have sent." Her eyes left the stricken face and
clung to the calla lily on the window-sill, as they had done that
afternoon when she came here with Gershom. The single blossom on the
lily had not faded; it was still as perfect as it had been then--only
two days ago!--and not one of the closed buds had begun to open beside
it.

"Oh, she wanted to see you," answered the old woman, in a croaking voice
which seemed to Corinna to contain a sinister note. "As long as she was
able to keep on her feet she used to go and sit in the Square just to
watch you come out--"

"Do you mean that she cared for me like that?" asked the girl, in a
hushed incredulous tone. "Was she really fond of me?"

The cripple turned her glassy eyes on the fresh young face. "Well, I
don't know that she was fond," she responded bleakly, "but when you're
as bad off as that, there ain't many things that you can think of."

A murmur fell from the lips of the dying woman, while she rolled her
head slowly from side to side, as if she were seeking ease less from
physical pain than from the thought in her mind. Her thick black hair,
matted and damp where it had been brushed back from her forehead, spread
like a veil over the pillow; and this sombre background lent a graven
majesty to her features. At the moment her head appeared as
expressionless as a mask; but in a few minutes, while they waited for
returning consciousness, a change passed slowly over the waxen face, and
the full colourless lips began to move rapidly and to form broken and
disconnected sentences. For a time they could not understand; then the
words came in a long sobbing breath. "It has been too long. It has been
too long."

"That goes on all the time," said the old woman. "I've been up with her
for three nights, and she rambles almost every minute. But sick folks
are like that," she concluded philosophically. She had n