animal’s recollection of a long and useful life.  In the two anxious days that followed, Libby and Grace were associated in the freedom of a common interest outside of themselves; she went to him for help and suggestion, and he gave them, as if nothing had passed to restrict or embarrass their relations.  There was that, in fact, in the awe of the time and an involuntary disoccupation of hers that threw them together even more constantly than before.  Dr. Mulbridge remained with his patient well into the forenoon; in the afternoon he came again, and that night he did not go away.  He superseded Grace as a nurse no less completely than he had displaced her as a physician.  He let her relieve him when he flung himself down for a few minutes’ sleep, or when he went out for the huge meals which he devoured, preferring the unwholesome things with a depravity shocking to the tender physical consciences of the ladies who looked on; but when he returned to his charge, he showed himself jealous of all that Grace had done involving the exercise of more than a servile discretion.  When she asked him once if there were nothing else that she could do, he said, “fires, keep those women and children quiet,” in a tone that classed her with both.  She longed to ask him what he thought of Mrs. May nard’s condition; but she had not the courage to invoke the intelligence that ignored her so completely, and she struggled in silence with such disheartening auguries as her theoretical science enabled her to make.

The next day was a Sunday, and the Sabbath hush which always hung over Jocelyn’s was intensified to the sense of those who ached between hope and fear for the life that seemed to waver and flicker in that still air.  Dr. Mulbridge watched beside his patient, noting every change with a wary intelligence which no fact escaped and no anxiety clouded; alert, gentle, prompt; suffering no question, and absolutely silent as to all impressions.  He allowed Grace to remain with him when she liked, and let her do his bidding in minor matters; but when from time to time she escaped from the intolerable tension in which his reticence and her own fear held her, he did not seem to see whether she went or came.  Toward nightfall she met him coming out of Mrs. Maynard’s room, as she drew near in the narrow corridor.

“Where is your friend—­the young man—­the one who smokes?” he asked, as if nothing unusual had occupied him.  “I want him to give me a cigar.”

“Dr. Mulbridge,” she said, “I will not bear this any longer.  I must know the worst—­you have no right to treat me in this way.  Tell me now—­tell me instantly:  will she live?”

He looked at her with an imaginable apprehension of hysterics, but as she continued firm, and placed herself resolutely in his way, he relaxed his scrutiny, and said, with a smile, “Oh, I think so.  What made you think she would n’t?”

She drew herself aside, and made way far him.

“Go!” she cried.  She would have said more, but her indignation choked her.