This was what he said, and Alice felt her heart throb with increased respect for the unselfish man, who gave no other token of his impatience to be gone, but stayed home hour after hour in that close, feverish room, ministering to all of ’Lina’s fancies, and treating her as if no word of disagreement had ever passed between them.  Night after night, day after day, ’Lina grew worse, until at last, there was no hope, and the council of physicians summoned to her side said that she would die.  Then Densie softened again, but did not go near the dying one.  She could not be sent away a second time, so she stayed in her own room, which witnessed many a scene of agonizing prayer, for the poor girl passing so surely to another world.

“God save her at the last.  God let her into heaven,” was the burden of shattered Densie’s prayer, while Alice’s was much like it, and Hugh, too, more than once bowed his head upon the burning hands he held, and asked that space might be given her for repentance, shuddering as he recalled the time when, like her, he lay at death’s door, unprepared to enter in.  Was he prepared now?  Had he made a proper use of life and health restored?  Alas! that the answer conscience forced upon him should have wrung out so sharp a groan.  “But I will be,” he said, and laying his own face by ’Lina’s, he promised that if God would bring her reason back, so they could tell her of the untried world her feet were nearing, he would henceforth be a better man, and try to serve the God who heard and answered that earnest prayer.

It was many days ere the fever abated, but there came a morning in early May when the eyes were not so fearfully bright as they had been, while the wild ravings were hushed, and ’Lina lay quietly upon her pillow.

“Do you know me?” Alice asked, bending gently over her, while Hugh, from the other side of the bed, leaned eagerly forward for the reply.

“Yes, Alice, but where am I?  This is not New York—­not my room.  Have I—­am I sick, very sick?” and ’Lina’s eyes took a terrified expression as she read the truth in Alice’s face.  “I am not going to die, am I?” she continued, casting upon Alice a look which would have wrung out the truth, even if Alice had been disposed to withhold it, which she was not.

“You are very sick,” she answered, “and though we hope for the best, the doctor does not encourage us much.  Are you willing to die, ’Lina?”

Neither Hugh nor Alice ever forgot the tone of ’Lina’s voice as she replied: 

“Willing?  No!” or the expression of her face, as she turned it to the wall, and motioned them to leave her.

For two days after that she neither spoke nor gave other token of interest in anything passing around her, but at the expiration of that time, as Alice sat by her, she suddenly exclaimed: