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you to get well. He says he has come home this time to marry you.'

The wan lips quivered. 'He will never marry me!'

'Yes, yes, he will—if you will take this jelly. Look here—he wrote these words to you before my very eyes: 'Dear love to my Isa!' . . . If you are good, and will sleep, he may see you—to-morrow.'

The girl opened her lips and ate the jelly greedily. She ate as much as she was desired. In three minutes more her head had fallen like a child's upon her pillow and she was sleeping peacefully.

I went up to Sebastian's room, quite excited with the news. He was busy among his bacilli. They were his hobby, his pets. 'Well, what do you think, Professor?' I cried. 'That patient of Nurse Wade's——'

He gazed up at me abstractedly, his brow contracting. 'Yes, yes; I know,' he interrupted. 'The girl in Fourteen. I have discounted her case long ago. She has ceased to interest me. . . . Dead, of course! Nothing else was possible.'

I laughed a quick little laugh of triumph. 'No, sir; not dead. Recovering! She has fallen just now into a normal sleep; her breathing is natural.'

He wheeled his revolving chair away from the germs and fixed me with his keen eyes. 'Recovering?' he echoed. 'Impossible! Rallying, you mean. A mere flicker. I know my trade. She must die this evening.'

'Forgive my persistence,' I replied; 'but—her temperature has gone down to ninety-nine and a trifle.'

He pushed away the bacilli in the nearest watch-glass quite angrily. 'To ninety-nine!' he exclaimed, knitting his brows. 'Cumberledge, this is disgraceful! A most disappointing case! A most provoking patient!'