It was the truth. Helen, worn out by her long and hungry journey, disappointed, driven from pillar to post, had found it too much that her last hope should waste precious time in philological studies. "I beg your pardon," she said, stifling her tears, "but I have come all the way from England to see Dr. Ramsay, and now I cannot get at him. Do help me if you can." Dr. Pagenheim blew out his cheeks as if a pipe might have been a consolation to him. "Soh! You--you cannot be his mother--you--you are his sister, doubtless?" Helen, behind her handkerchief, shook her head. "I--I am a nurse," she said faintly, "and I have come on purpose----" "But, gnädige Fraulein," interposed the great man, becoming professional, "he is already nursed, nursed devotedly. There is no place for you I fear. It is against the rules. If you were a relation it were different." Helen looked up at him, goaded to desperation. "But--but I am more than that, Dr. Pagenheim," she said. "I--I am engaged to be married to him." The blond, florid face melted into instant sentiment, the tongue into German. "Soh! Oh Love! Love! What dost thou not? So he is betrothed and we knew it not? Stay! is your name Helen?" "Yes. Helen Tressilian," she replied. "_Liebes Kind!_" cried the great professsor. "He has in his delirium called for you by name. Dry your tears, we will mend him for you surely. Helen! Ach! that is an all-powerful, love-compelling name-of-uttermost victory, so have no fear. You shall to him go so soon as I can get on my boots." He stuck out a big slippered foot in explanation and encouragement as he beamed on her. "If I might have a glass of milk," Helen felt emboldened to say. "I haven't had time, somehow----" "Gott in Himmel! She is hungry," roared the professor. "Oh, Love! Love! what dost thou not? Greta," this to the elderly servant who answered his furious ringing. "Milk, food, drink, everything for this gracious-betrothed-one while I put on my boots." Fortified by hot coffee and a roll, Helen, being whirled through the streets of Vienna in the doctor's _coupé_, felt that, come what might, she did not repent her hasty impulse. Even if Peter Ramsay lived. "Thou must remember, _liebes kind_," came the professor's jovial voice all softened to warning, "he is very ill; only the good God knows how ill. But we are doing our best for him. The high fever has gone, but the weakness remains. You must be very quiet." "I am a nurse," she said, "I know." In a way it was only as a nurse that she had come, only because she could not bear to think of him dying alone.