There was little that Muriel could do to ease her.  She tied back the tossing hair, and rearranged the bedclothes; then sat down by her side, hoping she might get some sleep.

Not long after, Nick crept in on slippered feet, but Olga heard him instantly, and started up with out-flung arms.  “Nick, darling, I want you!  I want you!  Come quite close!  I think I’m going to die.  Don’t let me, Nick!”

Muriel rose to make room for him, but he motioned her back sharply; then knelt down himself by the child’s pillow and took her head upon his arm.

“Stick to it, sweetheart!” he murmured softly.  “There’s a medicine man coming, and you’ll be better presently.”  Olga cuddled against him with a sigh, and comforted by the close holding of his arm dropped presently into an uneasy doze.

Nick never stirred from his position, and mutely Muriel sat and watched him.  There was a wonderful tenderness about him just then, a softness with which she was strangely familiar, but which almost she had forgotten.  If she had never seen him before that moment, she knew that she would have liked him.

He seemed to have wholly forgotten her presence.  His entire attention was concentrated upon the child.  His lips twitched from time to time, and she knew that he was very anxious, intensely impatient under his stillness for the doctor’s coming.  She remembered that old trick of his.  She had never before associated it with any emotion.

Suddenly he turned his head as if he had felt her scrutiny, and looked straight into her eyes.  It was only for a moment.  His glance flickered beyond her with scarcely a pause.  Yet it was to her as if by that swift look he had spoken, had for the first time made deep and passionate protest against her bitter judgment of him, had as it were shown her in a single flash the human heart beneath the jester’s garb.

And again very deep down in her soul there stirred that blind, unconscious entity, of the existence of which she herself had so vague a knowledge, feeling upwards, groping outwards, to the light.

There came upon her a sudden curious sense of consternation—­a feeling as of a mental earthquake when the very foundations of the soul are shaken.  Had she conceivably been mistaken in him?  With all her knowledge of him, had she by some strange mischance—­some maddening, some inexplicable misapprehension—­failed utterly and miserably to see this man as he really was?

For the first time the question sprang up within her.  And she found no answer to it—­only that breathless, blank dismay.

Softly Nick’s voice broke in upon her seething doubt.  He had laid Olga back upon the pillow.

“The doctor is here.  Do you mind staying with her while I go?”

“You’ll come back, Nick?” the child urged, in her painful whisper.

“Yes, I’ll come back,” he promised.  “Honest Injun!”

He touched her cheek lightly at parting, and Olga caught the caressing hand and pressed it against her burning lips.  Muriel saw his face as he turned from the bed.  It was all softened and quivering with emotion.