“Yes, I burned it.  At least I gave it to Aunt Amy to burn.  I couldn’t leave mother.”

“Well, let us call Aunt Amy, and make sure.  I believe I am foolishly nervous, but—­” without finishing his sentence the doctor walked to the door and waited there until Aunt Amy answered his call.

“Auntie,” said Esther, “you remember the little package I gave you that night when mother was so ill?  It was done up in purplish blue paper.”

“Yes, Esther.”

“Do you remember what you did with it, dear?”

Aunt Amy looked frightened.

“I—­I don’t know.  I’ve a very good memory, Esther.  But somehow I’m not quite sure.”

“You will remember presently,” said Callandar kindly.  “We want to be quite sure that it was destroyed.  You know, I explained to you, that Mary must take no more of that medicine.  It is very dangerous....”

“What does it do?” unexpectedly.

“It is a kind of poison.  It makes people very ill, so ill that in time they die.”

“Mary likes it.  She says it makes her nerves better and puts her to sleep.”

“When did she say that?”

“When she asked me if I had any.”

The doctor and the girl exchanged a quick look.

“And you gave her some?”

“Oh, no, I couldn’t.  I had burned it in the stove—­I remember now.”

They both drew a breath of intense relief.  But when she had left them, Callandar looked very sober.  “There, you see,” he said, “was a possibility we had overlooked.”

“Yes, and it would have been my fault.  I should have made sure long ago.  It is hard to get out of the habit of taking things for granted.”

“Yet it is the one thing we must never do.  In this we must trust no one, and nothing.  Then we shall win.  If there is no relapse now, the worst, the slowest part, is over.  Soon you will be free, dear girl—­and God bless you forever for what you have been to her and to me.”

She answered him only with a wistful smile and when he had gone, she sighed.  She would be free soon, he said.  Strange that he could not see that it was her freedom that she dreaded.  Hard as it had been, hard as it was, there was a still harder time coming—­the time when she would be free—­free, to leave forever the man she loved.

The present with its load of duty and anxiety, the constant strain of watching, its bearing of poor Mary’s thousand ingratitudes seemed dear and desirable when she thought of the black gulf of separation at the end of the tortuous way.  But of course he could not guess.  How could he?  Men are so different from women.

She knew, though, that she was coming to the end of her strength.  Not even the doctor guessed how great the strain of those past weeks had been.