In the gray dawn she came to him and said, "My watch is over, and I must leave you for a little while; but as soon as I have rested I will come again." "Grace," he faltered, hesitatingly, "would you mind kissing an old, old man? I never had a child of my own to kiss me." She stooped down and kissed him again and again, and he felt her hot tears upon his face. "You have a tender heart, my dear," he said, gently. "Good-by, Grace--Grace Brentford's child. Dear Grace, when we meet again perhaps all tears will be wiped from your eyes forever." She stole away exhausted and almost despairing. On reaching her little room she sank on her couch, moaning; "Oh, Warren, Warren, would that I were sleeping your dreamless sleep beside you!" Long before it was time for her to go on duty again she returned to the ward to visit her aged friend. His cot was empty. In reply to her eager question she was told that he had died suddenly from internal hemorrhage soon after she had left him. She looked dazed for a moment, as if she had received a blow, then fell fainting on the cot from which her mother's friend had been taken. The limit of her endurance was passed. Before the day closed, the surgeon in charge of the hospital told her gently and firmly that she must take an indefinite leave of absence. She departed at once in the care of an attendant; but stories of the white-haired nurse lingered so long in the ward and hospital that at last they began to grow vague and marvellous, like the legends of a saint. CHAPTER XXXIV RITA'S BROTHER