hought, but only in wild
emotion she knew that, as far as she was concerned, it might be better
for him to die. If he lived, and chose herself, the storm would only
begin again. If he lived and chose the other....

But as to that she could see no reasonable prospect. She had only to
look at Letty, shrinking in her corner of the bedroom, to judge any
such mischance impossible. She was so humble; so negligible; so much
a bit of flotsam of the streets. She had an appeal of her own, of
course; but an appeal so lowly as to be obscured by the wayside dust
which covered it. What was the flower to which Rash had now and then
compared her? Wasn't that what he called it--the dust flower?--that
ragged blue thing of byways and backyards, which you couldn't touch
without washing your hands afterwards. No, no! Not even the legal tie
which nominally bound them could hold in the face of this inequality.
It would be too grotesque.

The hours passed. The night nurse was now installed, and was reading
_Keith Macdermot's Destiny_. She was one of those tall, slender women
whom you see to be all bone. As businesslike as Miss Gallifer, and
quite as detached, Miss Moines was brisk and systematic. It being her
habit to subdue a household to herself before she entered on her
duties her eyes regarded Miss Walbrook and Letty with the startled
glance of a horse's.

For before going Miss Gallifer had given her a hint. "You'll have to
do a lot of side-stepping here. This is the famous House of Mystery.
You'll find two nuts upstairs--that's what I'd call them if they were
men--but they're women--girls, sort of--and you've just got to leave
them alone. One's a high-stepper--regular society--was engaged to the
patient and now acts as if she'd married him; and the other--well,
perhaps you can make her out; I can't. Seems a little off. May be the
poor castaway, once loved, and now broken-hearted but faithful, you
read about in books. Anyhow, there they are, and you'd best let them
be. It won't be for more than--well, I give him twenty-four hours at
the most. I begin to think that for once old Wisdom is right.
Good-looker too, poor fellow, and can't be more than thirty-five. I
wonder what could have happened? I suppose they'll go into that at the
inquest."

But Miss Moines was too systematic to have companions in the room
without marshaling them to some form of duty. They needed to eat; they
needed to sleep. Now and then someone had to go out on the l