strange vitality. Then there was her cousin, again, Ellen Stubbs. We had
HER for stubborn chronic laryngitis--a very bad case--anyone else would
have died--yielded at once to your treatment; and made, I recollect, a
splendid convalescence."

"What a memory you have!" Sebastian cried, admiring against his will.
"It is simply marvellous! I never saw anyone like you in my life...
except once. HE was a man, a doctor, a colleague of mine--dead long
ago.... Why--" he mused, and gazed hard at her. Hilda shrank before
his gaze. "This is curious," he went on slowly, at last; "very curious.
You--why, you resemble him!"

"Do I?" Hilda replied, with forced calm, raising her eyes to his. Their
glances met. That moment, I saw each had recognised something; and from
that day forth I was instinctively aware that a duel was being waged
between Sebastian and Hilda,--a duel between the two ablest and most
singular personalities I had ever met; a duel of life and death--though
I did not fully understand its purport till much, much later.

Every day after that, the poor, wasted girl in Number Fourteen grew
feebler and fainter. Her temperature rose; her heart throbbed weakly.
She seemed to be fading away. Sebastian shook his head. "Lethodyne is
a failure," he said, with a mournful regret. "One cannot trust it. The
case might have recovered from the operation, or recovered from the
drug; but she could not recover from both together. Yet the operation
would have been impossible without the drug, and the drug is useless
except for the operation."

It was a great disappointment to him. He hid himself in his room, as was
his wont when disappointed, and went on with his old work at his beloved