Instead of snow and cold and the black terror of being overwhelmed by stormy night, here were light and warmth and a curiously sleepy yet volatile sense of comfort.

Jessica’s eyes for a long time rested tranquilly upon what seemed a gigantic rose hanging directly over her head. Her brain received no impression whatever as to why it was there, and there was not the slightest impulse to wonder or to think about it at all. Even when it finally began to descend nearer, and to expand and unfold pale pink leaves, still it was satisfying not to have to make any effort toward understanding it. The transformation went on with infinite slowness before her vacantly contented vision. Upon all sides the outer leaves gradually, little by little, stretched themselves downward, still downward, until they enveloped her as in the bell of some huge inverted lily. Indefinite spaces of time intervened, and then it became vaguely apparent that faint designs of other, smaller flowers were scattered over these large environing leaves, and that a soft, ruddy light came through them. With measured deliberation, as if all eternity were at its disposal, this vast floral cone revealed itself at last to her dim consciousness as being made of some thin, figured cloth. It seemed weeks—months—before she further comprehended that the rose above her was the embroidered centre of a canopy, and that the leaves depending from it in long, graceful curves about her were bed-curtains.

After a time she found herself lifting her hand upright and looking at it. It was wan and white like wax, as if it did not belong to her at all. From the wrist there was turned back the delicately quilted cuff of a man’s silk night-shirt. She raised the arm in its novel silken sleeve, and thrust it forward with some unformed notion that it would prove not to be hers. The action pushed aside the curtains, and a glare of light flashed in, under which she shut her eyes and gasped.

When she looked again, an elderly, broad-figured man with a florid face was standing close beside the bed, gazing with anxiety upon her. She knew that it was General Boyce, and for a long time was not surprised that he should be there. The capacity for wondering, for thinking about things, seemed not to exist in her brain. She looked at him calmly and did not dream of speaking.

“Are you better?” she heard him eagerly whisper. “Are you in pain?”

The complex difficulty of two questions which required separate answers troubled her remotely. She made some faint nodding motion of her head and eyes, and then lay perfectly still again. She could hear the sound of her own breathing—a hoarse, sighing sound, as if of blowing through a comb—and, now that it was suggested to her, there was a deadened heavy ache in her breast.

Still placidly surveying the General, she began to be conscious of remembering things. The pictures came slowly, taking form with a fantastic absence of consecutive meaning, but they gradually produced the effect of a recollection upon her mind. The starting point—and everything else that went before that terrible sinking, despairing struggle through the wet snow—was missing. She recalled most vividly of all being seized with a sudden crisis of swimming giddiness and choking—her throat and chest all afire with the tortures of suffocation. It was under a lamp-post, she remembered; and when the vehement coughing was over, her mouth was full of blood, and there were terrifying crimson spatters on the snow. She had stood aghast at this, and then fallen to weeping piteously to herself with fright. How strange it was—in the anguish of that moment she had moaned out, “O mother, mother!” and yet she had never seen that parent, and had scarcely thought of her memory even for many, many years.

Then she had blindly staggered on, sinking more than once from sheer exhaustion, but still forcing herself forward, her wet feet weighing like leaden balls, and fierce agonies clutching her very heart. She had fallen in the snow at the very end of her journey; had dragged herself laboriously, painfully, up on to the steps, and had beaten feebly on the panels of the door with her numbed hands, making an inarticulate moan which not all her desperate last effort could lift into a cry; and then there had come, with a great downward swoop of skies and storm, utter blackness and collapse.

She closed her eyes now in the weariness which this effort at recollection had caused. Her senses wandered off, unbidden, unguided, to a dream of the buzzing of a bee upon a window-pane, which was somehow like the stertorous sound of her own breathing.

The bee—a big, loud, foolish fellow, with yellow fur upon his broad back and thighs—had flown into the schoolroom, and had not wit enough to go out again. Some of the children were giggling over this, but she would not join them because Mr. Tracy, the schoolmaster upon the platform, did not wish it. She wanted very much to please him. Already she delighted in the hope that he liked her better than he did some of the other girls—scornful girls who came from wealthy homes, and wore better dresses than any of the despised Lawton brood could ever hope to have.

Silk dresses, opened boldly at the throat, and with long trains tricked out with imitation garlands. They were worn now by older girls—hard-faced, jealous, cruel creatures—and these sat in a room with lace curtains and luxurious furniture. And some laughed with a ring like brass in their voices, and some wept furtively in comers, and some cursed their God and all living things; and there was the odor of wine and the uproar of the piano, and over all a great, ceaseless shame and terror.

Escape from this should be made at all hazards; and the long, incredibly fearful flight, with pursuit always pressing hot upon her, the evil fangs of the wolf-pack snapping in the air all about her frightened ears, led to a peaceful, soft-carpeted forest, where the low setting sun spread a red light among the big tree-trunks. Against this deep, far-distant sky there was the figure of a man coming. For him she waited with a song in her heart. Did she not know him? It was Reuben Tracy, and he was too gentle and good not to see her when he passed. She would call out to him—and lo! she could not.

Horace was with her, and held her hand; and they both gazed with terrified longing after Tracy, and could not cry out to him for the awful dumbness that was on them. And when he, refusing to see them, spread out his arms in anger, the whole great forest began to sway and circle dizzily, and huge trees toppled, rocks crashed downward, gaunt giant reptiles rose from yawning caves with hideous slimy eyes in a lurid ring about her. And she would save Horace with her life, and fought like mad, bleeding and maimed and frenzied, until the weight of mountains piled upon her breast held her down in helpless, choking horror. Then only came the power to scream, and—

Out of the roar of confusion and darkness came suddenly a hush and the return of light. She was lying in the curtained bed, and a tender hand was pressing soft cool linen to her lips.

Opening her eyes in tranquil weakness, she saw two men standing at her bedside. He who held the cloth in his hand was Dr. Lester, whom she remembered very well. The other—he whose head was bowed, and whose eyes were fastened upon hers with a pained and affrighted gaze—was Horace Boyce.

In her soul she smiled at him, but no answering softness came to his harrowed face.

“I told your father everything,” she heard the doctor say in a low tone. “I recognized her on the instant. I happened to have attended her, by the merest chance, when her child was born.”

“Her child?” the other asked, in the same low, far-away voice.

“Yes—and your child. He is in Thessaly now, a boy nearly six years old.”

“Good God! I never knew—”

“You seem to have taken precious good care not to know,” said the doctor, with grave dislike. “This is the time and place to speak plainly to you, Boyce. This poor girl has come to her death through the effort to save you from disgrace. She supposed you lived here, and dragged herself here to help you.” Jessica heard the sentence of doom without even a passing thought. Every energy left in her feebly fluttering brain was concentrated upon the question, Is he saved? Vaguely the circumstances of the papers, of the threats against Horace, of her desires and actions, seemed to come back to her memory. She waited in dazed suspense to hear what Horace would say; but he only hung his head the lower, and left the doctor to go on.

“She raved for hours last night,” he said, “after the women had got her to bed, and we had raised her out of the comatose state, about saving you from State prison. First she would plead with Tracy, then she would appeal to you to fly, and so backwards and forwards, until she wore herself out. The papers she had got hold of—they must have slipped out of Gedney’s pocket into the sleigh. I suppose you know that I took them back to Tracy this morning?”

Still Horace made no answer, but bent that crushed and vacant gaze upon her face. She marvelled that he could not see she was awake and conscious, and still more that the strength and will to speak were withheld from her. The dreadful pressure upon her breast was making itself felt again, and the painful sound of the labored breathing took on the sombre rhythm of a distant death-chant. Oh, would he never speak! No: still the doctor went on:

“Tracy will be here in a few minutes. He’s terribly upset by the thing, and has gone first to tell the news at the Minsters’. Do you want to see him when he comes?”

“I don’t know what I want,” said Horace, gloomily.

“If I were you, I would go straight to him and say frankly, ‘I have been a damned fool, and a still damneder hypocrite, and I throw myself on your mercy.’ He’s the tenderest-hearted man alive, and this sight here will move him. Upon my word, I can hardly keep the tears out of my eyes myself.”

Jessica saw as through a mist that these two men’s faces, turned upon her, were softened with a deep compassion. Then suddenly the power to speak came to her. It was a puny and unnatural voice which fell upon her ears—low and hoarsely grating, and the product of much pain.

“Go away—doctor,” she murmured. “Leave him here.”

Horace sat softly upon the edge of the bed, and gathered her two hands tenderly in his. He did not attempt to keep back the tears which welled to his eyes, nor did he try to talk. Thus they were together for what seemed a long time, surrounded by a silence which was full of voices to them both. A wan smile settled upon her face as she held him in her intent gaze.

“Take the boy,” she whispered at last; “he is Horace, too. Don’t let him lie—ever—to any girl.”

The young man groaned in spite of himself, and for answer gently pressed her hands. “I promise you that, Jess,” he said, after a time, in a broken voice. He bent over and kissed her on the forehead. The damp roughness of the skin chilled and terrified him, but the radiance on her face deepened.

“It hurts—to breathe,” she said, after a time with a glance of affectionate apology in her smile.

Subdued noises were faintly heard now in the hallway outside, and presently the door was opened cautiously, and a tall new figure entered the room. After a moment’s hesitation Reuben Tracy tiptoed his way to the bedside, and stood gravely behind and above his former partner.

“Is she conscious?” he asked of Boyce, in a tremulous whisper; and Horace, bending his head still lower, murmured between choking sobs: “It is Mr. Tracy, Jess, come to say—to see you.”

Her eyes brightened with intelligence. “Good—good,” she said, slowly, as if musing to herself. The gaze which she fastened upon Reuben’s face was strangely full of intense meaning, and he felt it piercing his very heart. Minutes went by under the strain of this deep, half-wild, appealing look. At last she spoke, with a greater effort at distinctness than before, and in a momentarily clearer tone.

“You were always kind,” she said. “Don’t hurt—my boy. Shake hands with him—for my sake.”

The two young men obeyed mechanically, after an instant’s pause, and without looking at each other. Neither had eyes save for the white face on the pillows in front of them, and for the gladdened, restful light which spread softly over it as their hands touched in amity before her vision.

Now she seemed no longer to see them.

In the languor of peace which had come to possess her, even the sense of pain in breathing was gone. There were shadowy figures on the retina of her brain, but they conveyed no idea save of general beatitude to her mind. The space in which her senses floated was radiant and warm and full of formless beauty. Various individuals—types of her loosening ties to life—came and went almost unheeded in this daze.

Lucinda, vehemently weeping, and holding the little fair-haired, wondering boy over the bed for her final kiss, passed away like a dissolving mist. Her father’s face, too, dawned upon this dream, tear-stained and woful, and faded again into nothingness. Other flitting apparitions there were, even more vague and brief, melting noiselessly into the darkened hush.

The unclouded calm of this lethargy grew troubled presently when there fell upon her dulled ear the low tones of a remembered woman’s voice. Enough of consciousness flickered up to tell her whose it was. She strained her eyes in the gathering shadows to see Kate Minster, and began restlessly to roll her head upon the pillow.

“Where—where—her?” she moaned, striving to stretch forth her hand.

It was lifted and held softly in a tender grasp, and she felt as well a compassionate stroking touch laid upon her forehead. The gentle magnetism of these helped the dying girl to bring into momentary being the image of a countenance close above hers—a dark, beautiful face, all melting now with affection and grief. She smiled faintly into this face, and lay still again for a long time. The breathing grew terribly shorter and more labored, the light faded.