This was George Ware’s wooing.  It never stepped into the glare, the contention of profaner air.  It was not a seeking, a finding, a conquest; but a slow, sure growth of possession, which had as eternal foundation and seemed as eternally safe as the results of organic law.

George’s picture hung in Annie’s room, opposite the foot of her bed.  Opposite the foot of the bed in her mother’s room hung a large engraving of the Sistine Madonna.  I fancied that in Annie’s quieter moments her eyes rested with a troubled look upon this picture, and one day, when she was in a deep sleep, I exchanged the pictures.  I felt as if even lifeless canvas which had George’s face painted upon it, might work her good.

At last there came a night,—­they said it was the fourteenth, but the words conveyed no meaning to me,—­there came a night when Dr. Fearing, who had been sitting by Annie’s bed for two hours, watching her every breath, sprang suddenly to his feet, and beckoned to my aunt and me to follow him into the next room.  He shut the door, walked very swiftly up to us, looked first into her face then into mine; then felt her pulse, and then mine, and then turning to me, said,—­

“It will have to be you.”  We looked at him in sudden terror.  The tears were rolling down his wrinkled cheeks.

“What is it, William?” gasped Aunt Ann.

“It will have to be you,” he went on, looking me in the face, and taking no notice of her question; “your pulse can be trusted.  There has been a change.  When Annie wakes out of this sleep she will know you.  It may be in two hours, and it may not be for six.  But if in that first moment she is alarmed, or agitated in any way, she will die.”

“O William, let me stay.  I will be calm,” moaned my poor aunt.

Then I observed, for the first time, that she had called him “William.”  And then, for the first and last time, I heard Dr. Fearing call my Aunt Ann “darling,” and I remembered in that instant that it had been said once in my hearing, that it was because of his love for Mrs. Henry Ware that Dr. William Fearing had lived and would die a lonely man.

“Darling,” he said, and put one hand on her shoulder, “you would kill your child.  I forbid you to cross the threshold of that room till I come back.  You will thank me to-morrow.  Can you not trust me, Ann?” and he looked down from his full height, this brave old man, into the face of the woman he had loved, with a look like the look of one who dies to save another.  It was but for one second, and then he was again the physician, and turning to me, went on, “I have another patient to whom I must instantly go, and whom I may not be able to leave for hours.  You can do all that I would do,—­I believe,”—­then he felt my pulse again, and nodding his head with a sort of grim professional satisfaction, which no amount of emotion could wholly divert from its delight in the steady nerves and undisturbed currents of a healthy body,—­resumed, “You have but one thing to do:  when she wakes, look perfectly composed; if she speaks, answer her in a perfectly natural voice; give her two drops of this medicine, and tell her to go to sleep again.  If you do this, she will fall asleep at once.  If you show the least agitation, she may die,—­probably will!”—­and Dr. Fearing was gone.