my face between her hands—­yes, sir, she did, Mr. V.V., right there before ’em all—­and she says, kind of surprised, ’Why, Co-rinne, I thought Doctor he told you long ago,’ she says.  ’You been a lady all the time ...’  And then ... and then I woke up!...  Wasn’t that funny?” said Kern.  And her face indicated that she might have told more, if she had had a mind to....

She lay staring, with parted lips and that same remote half-smile, as of one not yet fully returned from fairy wanderings in far lands.  She did not seem to expect her inquiry to bring forth any response from the man sitting in the shadows, and it didn’t, so far as words went.  Mr. V.V.’s fingers had closed over her exposed wrist; presently he put the bony little arm back under the cover, rose, and went over silently to the other gas-jet where the little fixture was.  The nurse, who had risen on an elbow at the first sound of voices, had lain down again at the young man’s signal.  She did not stir now, though perhaps she was not asleep.

Mr. V.V. returned to the bed with a cup in his hand.  Kern was lying exactly as he had left her—­“the wonder was not quite yet gone from that still look of hers.”

“Drink this, Kernie....”

She drank incuriously, with his supporting hand upon her back; was gently lowered upon her pillow again; and then she turned upon her side, wide-eyed still, but silent.

“Now, go to sleep.  I’ll sit here by you....”

He noted the fact of beef-tea at twelve-thirty upon the chart, and sat again in the shadows.  Soon Kern’s eyelids drooped, and in time she fell asleep.

But the doctor sat on in the dim room, long after his charity sick had slipped back again to her happy dreams.  And as he sat, there waxed a flame in him, and he pledged himself that henceforward there should be no pausing, neither compassion nor compunction.  What mattered the troubles of individuals?  What mattered himself, or that Duty to-night seemed visaged like an Iron Maid?  Here, indeed, there beckoned him the great good task.  The day of the rocky plain and the prophet in a loincloth was gone; but was there less might in the printed word and the penny newspaper?  Spare this child, Lord, and the wrongs done upon her shall not again lack a voice....

And later, much later, when the tall young man limped back to his desolate office, he did not at once go to bed, though the small hours then were fast growing.  Six weeks, and more, he had to write his articles in:  but there was that in him now which would not be denied.  He sat again at his old secretary, a cheap pad before him, and the words that ran from his stub of a pencil were words winged with fire....

* * * * *

If this was a compact offered, it seemed that it had been sealed in high places.  Next morning, which was the morning of September 4th, Miss Masters came smiling to the Garland breakfast-table; and all that day, for the first time in seven weeks, Kern’s temperature did not move above 103.  On the morning following, it slipped down another half-degree; on the third, the same; and on the fourth morning there existed no reasonable doubt that she was going to get well.