“Why have you come here?  Leave us at once; don’t you see? don’t you know?” and he pointed toward Julia, whose face showed so plainly in the gaslight.

“Yes, I know, and I came to help you take care of her.  I am not afraid,” Daisy said, and, freeing herself from his grasp, she walked straight up to Julia and laid her soft, white hand upon her head.  “I am Daisy,” she said, “and I’ve come to take care of you.  I just heard you were here; how hot your poor head is! let me bathe it; shall I?”

She went to the bowl, and wringing a cloth in ice water, bathed and rubbed the sick woman’s head, and held the cool cloth to the face and wiped the parched lips, and rubbed the feverish hands, while Guy stood, looking on, bewildered and confounded, and utterly unable to say a word or utter a protest to this angel, as it seemed to him, who had come unbidden to his aid, forgetful of the risk she ran and the danger she incurred.  Once as she turned her beautiful face to him and he saw how wondrously fair and lovely it was, lovely with a different expression from any he had ever seen there, it came over him with a thrill of horror that that face must not be marred and disfigured with the terrible pestilence, and he made another effort to send her away.  But Daisy would not go.

“I am not afraid,” she said.  “I have just been vaccinated, and there was already a good scar on my arm; look!” and she pushed back her sleeve and showed her round, white arm with the mark upon it.

Guy did not oppose her after that, but let her do what she liked, and when, an hour later, the doctor came he found his recent visitor sitting on Julia’s bed, with Julia’s head lying against her bosom and Julia herself asleep.  Some word which sounded very much like “thunderation” escaped his lips, but he said no more, for he saw in the sleeping woman’s face a look he never mistook.  It was death, and ten minutes after he entered the room Julia Thornton lay dead in Daisy’s arms.

There was a moment or so of half-consciousness, during which they caught the words.  “So kind in you; it makes me easier; be good to the children; one is called for you, but Guy loved me, too.  Good-by.  I am going to Jesus.”

That was the last she ever spoke, and a moment after she was gone.  In his fear lest the facts should be known to his guests, the host insisted that the body should be removed under cover of the night, and as Guy knew the railway officials would object to taking it on any train, there was no alternative except to bury it in town, and so before the morning broke there was brought up to the room a closely sealed coffin and box, and Daisy helped lay Julia in her last bed, and put a white flower in her hair and folded her hands upon her bosom, and then watched from the window the little procession which followed the body out to the cemetery, where, in the stillness of the coming day, they buried it, together with everything which had been used about the bed, Daisy’s party dress included; and when at last the full morning broke, with stir and life in the hotel, all was empty and still in the fumigated chamber of death, and in the adjoining room, clad in a simple white wrapper, with a blue ribbon in her hair, Daisy sat with Guy’s little boy on her lap and her namesake at her side, amusing them as best she could and telling them their mamma had gone to live with Jesus.