same deep, slow, hampered breathing, the same feeble, jerky pulse, the
same deathly pallor on the dark cheeks, the same corpse-like rigidity of
limb and muscle.

At last our patient stirred faintly, as in a dream; her breath faltered.
We bent over her. Was it death, or was she beginning to recover?

Very slowly, a faint trace of colour came back to her cheeks. Her heavy
eyes half opened. They stared first with a white stare. Her arms
dropped by her side. Her mouth relaxed its ghastly smile.... We held our
breath.... She was coming to again!

But her coming to was slow--very, very slow. Her pulse was still weak.
Her heart pumped feebly. We feared she might sink from inanition at
any moment. Hilda Wade knelt on the floor by the girl's side and held a
spoonful of beef essence coaxingly to her lips. Number Fourteen gasped,
drew a long, slow breath, then gulped and swallowed it. After that
she lay back with her mouth open, looking like a corpse. Hilda pressed
another spoonful of the soft jelly upon her; but the girl waved it away
with one trembling hand. "Let me die," she cried. "Let me die! I feel
dead already."

Hilda held her face close. "Isabel," she whispered--and I recognised
in her tone the vast moral difference between "Isabel" and "Number
Fourteen,"--"Is-a-bel, you must take it. For Arthur's sake, I say, you
MUST take it."

The girl's hand quivered as it lay on the white coverlet. "For Arthur's
sake!" she murmured, lifting her eyelids dreamily. "For Arthur's sake!
Yes, nurse, dear!"