How short the perspective must look now, thought Norma, to that troubled brain that was struggling among closing shadows, nearer and nearer every slow clocktick to the end. How loathsome it must be to the prisoned spirit, this handsome, stifling room, this army of maids and nurses and doctors so decorously resigned to facing the last scene of all. Why, the poorest child in the city to-night, healthily asleep in some unspeakable makeshift for a bed, possessed what all the Melrose money could not buy for this moaning, suffocating old autocrat. "I should like to die out on a hillside, under the stars," thought Norma, "with no one to watch me. This is--somehow--so horrible!" And she crept toward the bed and slipped to her knees again, forcing herself against her inclination--for somehow prayers seemed to have nothing to do with this scene--to pray for the departing soul. "Norma," the old lady said, suddenly, opening her eyes. She looked quietly and intelligently at the girl. "Yes, dear!" Norma stammered, with a frightened glance toward the nurses. These were instantly intent, at the bedside. But Mrs. Melrose paid no attention to them. She patted Norma's hand. "Late for you, dear!" she whispered. "Night!" Obediently she drank something the nurse put to her lips, and when she spoke it was more clearly. A moment later Doctor Murray had her pulse between his nerveless fingers. She moved her eyes lazily to smile at him. "Tide running out, old friend!" she said, in a deep, rich voice. The doctor smiled, shaking his head, but Norma saw his eyes glisten behind his glasses. Suddenly Mrs. Melrose frowned, and began to show excitement. "Norma!" she said, quickly. "I want Chris!" "Right here, Aunt Marianna!" Norma answered, soothingly. And Chris was indeed leaning over the bed almost before she finished speaking. "I want to talk to you and Chris," the old lady said, contentedly closing her eyes. "Everybody else out!" she whispered. The room was immediately cleared. "It can't hurt her now!" Doctor Murray looked rather than said to Norma as he passed her. Chris watched the closing doors, sat beside the bed's head with one arm half-supporting his mother-in-law's pillows. "We're all alone, Aunt Marianna," he said. "Leslie and Annie will be here in the morning, and Alice told me to tell you that she hoped----" "Chris," the sick woman interrupted, gazing at him with an intense and painful stare, "this child here--Norma! I--I must straighten it all out now, Chris. Kate knows. Kate has all the papers--letters--Louison's letters! Ask Kate----" She shut her eyes. Norma and Chris looked at one another in bewilderment. There was a long silence. "So now you know!" Mrs. Melrose said, presently, returning to full consciousness as naturally as she had before. "I told you, didn't I?" she asked, faintly anxious. "Don't bother now, Aunt Marianna," the girl begged in distress. "To-morrow----"