“Peace,” I said and came to her. It was too true, I who am a physician knew the symptoms well. Indeed had it not been for my skill, Otomie would have died. For three long weeks I fought with death at her bedside, and in the end I conquered. The fever left her, and thanks to my treatment, there was no single scar upon her lovely face. During eight days her mind wandered without ceasing, and it was then I learned how deep and perfect was her love for me. For all this while she did nothing but rave of me, and the secret terror of her heart was disclosed—that I should cease to care for her, that her beauty and love might pall upon me so that I should leave her, that “the flower maid,” for so she named Lily, who dwelt across the sea should draw me back to her by magic; this was the burden of her madness. At length her senses returned and she spoke, saying: “How long have I lain ill, husband?” I told her and she said, “And have you nursed me all this while, and through so foul a sickness?” “Yes, Otomie, I have tended you.” “What have I done that you should be so good to me?” she murmured. Then some dreadful thought seemed to strike her, for she moaned as though in pain, and said, “A mirror! Swift, bring me a mirror!” I gave her one, and rising on her arm, eagerly she scanned her face in the dim light of the shadowed room, then let the plate of burnished gold fall, and sank back with a faint and happy cry: “I feared,” she said, “I feared that I had become hideous as those are whom the pestilence has smitten, and that you would cease to love me, than which it had been better to die.” “For shame,” I said. “Do you then think that love can be frightened away by some few scars?” “Yes,” Otomie answered, “that is the love of a man; not such love as mine, husband. Had I been thus—ah! I shudder to think of it—within a year you would have hated me. Perhaps it had not been so with another, the fair maid of far away, but me you would have hated. Nay, I know it, though I know this also, that I should not have lived to feel your hate. Oh! I am thankful, thankful.” Then I left her for a while, marvelling at the great love which she had given me, and wondering also if there was any truth in her words, and if the heart of man could be so ungrateful and so vile. Supposing that Otomie was now as many were who walked the streets of Tenoctitlan that day, a mass of dreadful scars, hairless, and with blind and whitened eyeballs, should I then have shrunk from her? I do not know, and I thank heaven that no such trial was put upon my constancy. But I am sure of this; had I become a leper even, Otomie would not have shrunk from me.