What was it that Mrs. Blakeley so feared?  Was it merely the unpleasant notoriety?  One could not help the feeling that there was something more that she suspected, perhaps knew, but would not tell.  Yet, apparently, it was aside from her desire to have her daughter restored to normal.  She was at sea, herself, I felt.

“Poor dear mother!” murmured Cynthia, rejoining me in a few moments.  “She hardly knows just what it is she does want-except that we want Virginia well again.”

We had not long to wait for Craig.  What I had told him over the telephone had been quite enough to arouse his curiosity.

Both Mrs. Blakeley and Cynthia met him, at first a little fearfully, but quickly reassured by his manner, as well as my promise to see that nothing appeared in the Star which would be distasteful.

“Oh, if some one could only bring back our little girl!” cried Mrs. Blakeley, with suppressed emotion, leading the way with her daughter up-stairs.

It was only for a moment that I could see Craig alone to explain the impressions I had received, but it was enough.

“I’m glad you called me,” he whispered.  “There is something queer.”

We followed them up to the dainty bedroom in flowered enamel where Virginia Blakeley lay, and it was then for the first time that we saw her.  Kennedy drew a chair up beside the little white bed and went to work almost as though he had been a physician himself.

Partly from what I observed myself and partly from what he told me afterward, I shall try to describe the peculiar condition in which she was.

She lay there lethargic, scarcely breathing.  Once she had been a tall, slender, fair girl, with a sort of wild grace.  Now she seemed to be completely altered.  I could not help thinking of the contrast between her looks now and the photograph in my pocket.

Not only was her respiration slow, but her pulse was almost imperceptible, less than forty a minute.  Her temperature was far below normal, and her blood pressure low.  Once she had seemed fully a woman, with all the strength and promise of precocious maturity.  But now there was something strange about her looks.  It is difficult to describe.  It was not that she was no longer a young woman, but there seemed to be something almost sexless about her.  It was as though her secondary sex characteristics were no longer feminine, but—­for want of a better word—­neuter.

Yet, strange to say, in spite of the lethargy which necessitated at least some artificial feeding, she was not falling away.  She seemed, if anything, plump.  To all appearances there was really a retardation of metabolism connected with the trance-like sleep.  She was actually gaining in weight!

As he noted one of these things after another, Kennedy looked at her long and carefully.  I followed the direction of his eyes.  Over her nose, just a trifle above the line of her eyebrows, was a peculiar red mark, a sore, which was very disfiguring, as though it were hard to heal.