"Dear, it won't hurt you at all; just two or three breaths of the ether and you will be sound asleep. When you wake up it will be all over and you will be well." Lloyd made the ether cone from a stiff towel, and set it on Hattie's dressing-table. Last of all and just before the operation the gauze sponges occupied her attention. The daytime brought her no rest. Hattie was not to have any breakfast, but toward the middle of the forenoon Lloyd gave her a stimulating enema of whiskey and water, following it about an hour later by a hundredth grain of atropia. She braided the little girl's hair in two long plaits so that her head would rest squarely and flatly upon the pillow. Hattie herself was now ready for the surgeon. Now there was nothing more to be done. Lloyd could but wait. She took her place at the bedside and tried to talk as lightly as was possible to her patient. But now there was a pause in the round of action. Her mind no longer keenly intent upon the immediate necessities of the moment, began to hark back again to the one great haunting fear that for so long had overshadowed it. Even while she exerted herself to be cheerful and watched for the smiles on Hattie's face her hands twisted tight and tighter under the folds of her blouse, and some second self within her seemed to say: "Suppose, suppose it should come, this thing I dread but dare not name, what then, what then? Should I not expect it? Is it not almost a certainty? Have I not been merely deceiving myself with the forlornest hopes? Is it not the most reasonable course to expect the worst? Do not all indications point that way? Has not my whole life been shaped to this end? Was not this calamity, this mighty sorrow, prepared for me even before I was born? And one can do nothing, absolutely nothing, nothing, but wait and hope and fear, and eat out one's heart with longing." There was a knock at the door. Instead of calling to enter Lloyd went to it softly and opened it a few inches. Mr. Campbell was there. "They've come--Street and the assistant." Lloyd heard a murmur of voices in the hall below and the closing of the front door. Farnham and Street went at once to the operating-room to make their hands and wrists aseptic. Campbell had gone downstairs to his smoking-room. It had been decided--though contrary to custom--that Lloyd should administer the chloroform. At length Street tapped with the handle of a scalpel on the door to say that he was ready. "Now, dear," said Lloyd, turning to Hattie, and picking up the ether cone.