As he turned to go, a boy in messenger's costume, presented himself at the door. "Message for Mr. Durand," he said, smartly. "Thirty cents due." Dr. Sydney gave the boy a slight push. "Go along with you," he growled. "Mr. Durand is sick--he may not live till morning. Go tell your employer not to bother us at such a time with messages." The boy hurried away, as if frightened at the close proximity of death to the locality. "I shall call again this evening," Dr. Sydney added, as he went slowly down the stairs; and then he muttered to himself: "A serious case, a serious case." CHAPTER XXII. DEAD IN HER BED. As the door closed upon Percy after that tragic interview, Dolores stood and listened to his departing footsteps, until the last echo died away. Then she flung herself down among the objects which were all associated with their happy hours of love and companionship, while dry despairing sobs shook her frail form. "Oh, Christ, pity me! my life is all in ruins, all in ruins!" she moaned, "Father--Mother--_God_, why did you curse me with the existence I never desired?" After a time, she rose up and tried to set her apartment in order. Every where she turned her eyes, they were greeted with some reminder of her life with Percy. Here was a souvenir of the happy bohemian days, in Paris. There a momento of that fatal ice-boat journey. Fatal, because she believed it was during that dangerous experience that Mrs. Butler contracted the illness which resulted in her death; and because on that day, Percy really passed from the position of friend to lover. Then, as she opened a book, trying to divert her tortured mind from these memories, out dropped a pressed fern, gathered in the Andean valley. She covered her face with her hands; she seemed to see again the fading glory of that wonderful sunset, the towering steeples of granite, and again she could hear the saucy Ta-ha-ha of the arajojo bird. It was more than she could bear. She rose hurriedly, and walked across the room, weeping silently. Suddenly her eyes fell upon the old faded photograph, which Percy had dropped beside the chair he occupied. She picked it up and gazed upon it with passionate fury, distorting her beautiful face. "Curse you, curse you!" she almost shrieked, and tearing the card in a thousand fragments, she trampled them under her feet, and fell in a dead swoon upon the floor beside them. It was dark when she returned to consciousness. She groped her way toward her couch, and, throwing herself upon it, fell into a troubled sleep, which lasted until the entrance of Lorette the following day.