"Yes, she is very sick," replied her father. His voice sounded almost savage. It was as if he were furious with his wife for being ill, furious with Maria, with life, and death itself. In reality he was torn almost to madness with anxiety. "Slip on something so you won't catch cold," said he, in his irritated voice. "I don't want another one down." Maria ran to her closet and pulled out a little pink wrapper. "Oh, father, is mother very sick?" she whispered again. "Yes, she is very sick. I am going to have another doctor to-morrow," replied her father, still in that furious, excited voice, which the sick woman must have heard. "What shall I--" began Maria, but her father, running down the stairs, cut her short. "Do nothing," said he. "Just go in there and stay with her. And don't you talk. Don't you speak a word to her. Go right in." With that the front door slammed. Maria went tiptoeing into her mother's room, still shaking from head to foot, and her blue eyes seeming to protrude from her little white face. Even before she entered her mother's room she became conscious of a noise, something between a wail and a groan. It was indescribably terrifying. It was like nothing which she had ever heard before. It did not seem possible that her mother, that anything human, in fact, was making such a noise, and yet no animal could have made it, for it was articulate. Her mother was in fact both praying and repeating verses of Scripture, in that awful voice which was no longer capable of normal speech, but was compounded of wail and groan. Every sentence seemed to begin with a groan, and ended with a long-drawn-out wail. Maria went close to her mother's bed and stood looking at her. Her poor little face would have torn her mother's heart with its piteous terror, had she herself not been in such agony. Maria did not speak. She remembered what her father had said. As her mother lay there, stretched out stiff and stark, almost as if she were dead, Maria glanced around the room as if for help. She caught sight of a bottle of cologne on the dresser, one which she had given her mother herself the Christmas before; she had bought it out of her little savings of pocket-money. Maria went unsteadily over to the dresser and got the cologne. She also opened a drawer and got out a clean handkerchief. She became conscious that her mother's eyes were upon her, even although she never ceased for a moment her cries of agony. "What--r you do--g?" asked her mother, in her dreadful voice. "Just getting some cologne to put on your head, to make you feel better, mother," replied Maria, piteously. She thought she must answer her mother's question in spite of her father's prohibition. Her mother seemed to take no further notice; she turned her face to the wall. "Have--mercy upon me, O Lord, according to Thy loving kindness, according to the multitude of Thy tender mercies," she shrieked out. Then the words ended with a long-drawn-out "Oh--oh--"