"I love him, I love him, and one does not speak lightly of love at a moment like this. Do you remember when you asked me to come and stay with you in the country to meet him? It was eighteen months ago. Your letter arrived when I had just been jilted by the man I was going to marry in a desperate effort to persuade myself that domesticity was the cure for my discontent. My discontent was love for your brother. It has never been anything else since the moment we met, though I cried out 'Never' when I read your invitation. I abandoned everything. I have lived ever since as a mountebank, driven always by a single instinct that sustained me. That instinct was merely a superstition to travel south. Whenever I traveled on, I had always the sense of an object. I have found that object at last, and I know absolutely that fate stood at your elbow and dragged with you at those weary bullocks in the mud to bring Michael here in time. I know that fate chained me to my balcony at Nish, where for nearly a month I have been watching for your arrival. You are wise; you have suffered; you have loved: I beseech you that, just for the sake of your pride, you will not rob me of this moment to which my whole life has been the mad overture." "What you say about my being a worry to him when he recovers consciousness is true," said the sister. "It's the only good argument you've brought forward. Ah, but I won't be so ungenerous. Stay then. To-night I will wait here and to-morrow you shall take my place." The flickering bareness of the room flashed upon Sylvia with unimaginable glory; the dark night of her soul was become day. "I think you can hear the joy in my heart," she whispered. "I can't say any more." Sylvia fell upon her knees; bowing her head upon the table, she wept tears that seemed to gush like melodious fountains in a new world. "You have made me believe that he will not die," the sister murmured. "I did not think that I should be able to believe that; but I do now, Sylvia." An assurance that positively seemed to contain life came over both of them. Sylvia rose from her knees and abruptly they began to talk practically of what should be done that night and of what it would be wise to provide to-morrow. Presently Sylvia left the house, and slept in her hotel one of those rare sleeps whence waking is a descent upon airy plumes from heights where action and aspiration are fused in a ravishing, unutterable affirmative, of which, somehow, a remembered consciousness is accorded to the favored soul. The next morning Michael's sister mounted her horse. The guns of the desperate army of Stephanovitch confronting the Bulgarian advance were now audible; their booming gave power of flight to the weakest that remained in Nish; and the coil of fugitives writhed over the muddy plain toward the mountains. "I think he seemed a little better this morning," she said, wistfully.