“But I was coming back--I was coming back--I tell you I should have stayed with her for ever.... See how she trembles!--Now her breath is gone--There is no pulse--Her heart is still--My God, her heart is still!--Hush! cover her face.... Row hard, you devils!--A hundred dollars if you make the point in time.... Whereaway?--Whereaway?--Steady now!--Let them have it across the bows!--Low! low!--fire low!... She is dead--she is dead!” These things he would say over and over again breathlessly, then he would rest a while, and the trouble would begin again. “It was not I that did it--no, it was not I. She did it herself!--She plunged it in, deep, deep, deep! You made me a devil!... Hush! I WILL tell!--I know you--yet--Mercy--Mercy--Falchion--” Yes, it was best that few should enter his cabin. The ravings of a sick man are not always counted ravings, no more than the words of a well man are always reckoned sane. At last I got him into a sound sleep, and by that time I was thoroughly tired out. I called my own steward, and asked him to watch for a couple of hours while I rested. I threw myself down and slept soundly for an hour beyond that time, the steward having hesitated to wake me. By that time we had passed into the fresher air of the Mediterranean, and the sea was delightfully smooth. Galt Roscoe still slept, though his temperature was high. My conference with Mrs. Falchion after breakfast was brief, but satisfactory. I told her frankly that Roscoe had been delirious, that he had mentioned her name, and that I thought it best to reduce the number of nurses and watchers. I made my proposition about Justine Caron. She shook her head a little impatiently, and said that Justine had told her, and that she was quite willing. Then I asked her if she would not also assist. She answered immediately that she wished to do so. As if to make me understand why she did it, she added: “If I did not hear the wild things he says, some one else would; and the difference is that I understand them, and the some one else would interpret them with the genius of the writer of a fairy book.” And so it happened that Mrs. Falchion came to sit many hours a day beside the sick couch of Galt Roscoe, moistening his lips, cooling his brow, giving him his medicine. After the first day, when she was, I thought, alternating between innate disgust of misery and her womanliness and humanity,--in these days more a reality to me,--she grew watchful and silently solicitous at every turn of the malady. What impressed me most was that she was interested and engrossed more, it seemed, in the malady than in the man himself. And yet she baffled me even when I had come to this conclusion.