She went back, closing the door behind her.  Alice was smiling.  “There, you are a dear!  I will love you forever for that!  It is only for a moment.  The doctors will soon be here, and then I must give him up.”

“Oh, Alice,” the poor lady whimpered, “why do you talk so wildly?  What do you mean?”

“Don’t cry, mamma!  It is only for a moment.  It is all very simple.  I am not crazy.  He was my lover!”

“Heaven help us!”

“Yes, this dear man, this noble man offered me his love, and I refused it.  I may have been crazy then, but I am not now.  I can love him now.  I will be his widow—­if I was not his wife.  We will be two widows together—­always.  Now you know I am doing nothing wrong or wild.  He is mine.

“Give me one of those towels,” she exclaimed, suddenly.  “I can tie up his head so that it will stop bleeding till the doctors come.”

She took the towels, tore strips from her own dress, and in a few moments, with singular skill and tenderness, she had stopped the flow of blood from the wound.

“There!  He looks almost as if he were asleep, does he not?  Oh, my love, my love!”

Up to this moment she had not shed one tear.  Her voice was strained, choked, and sobbing, but her eyes were dry.  She kissed him on his brow and his mouth.  She bent over him and laid her smooth cheek to his.  She murmured: 

“Good-by, good-by, till I come to you, my own love!”

All at once she raised her head with a strange light in her eyes.  “Mamma!” she cried, “see how warm his cheek is.  Heaven is merciful! perhaps he is alive.”

She put both arms about him, and, gently but powerfully lifting his dead weight of head and shoulders, drew him to her heart.  She held him to her warm bosom, rocking him to and fro.  “Oh, my beloved!” she murmured, “if you will live, I will be so good to you.”

She lowered him again, resting his head on her lap.  A drop of blood, from the napkin in which his head was wrapped, had touched the bosom of her dress, staining it as if a cherry had been crushed there.  She sat, gazing with an anguish of hope upon his pale face.  A shudder ran through him, and he opened his eyes—­only for a moment.  He groaned, and slowly closed them.

The tears could no longer be restrained.  They fell like a summer shower from her eyes, while she sobbed, “Thank God! my darling is not dead.”

Her quick ear caught footsteps at the outer door.  “Here, mamma, take my place.  Let me hide before all those men come in.”

In a moment she had leaped through the window, whence she ran through the dewy grass to her home.

An hour afterward her mother returned, escorted by one of the surgeons.  She found Alice in bed, peacefully sleeping.  As Mrs. Belding approached the bedside, Alice woke and smiled.  “I know without your telling me, mamma.  He will live.  I began to pray for him,—­but I felt sure he would live, and so I gave thanks instead.”