"Yes," said Wardwell simply. "It's right. However it is in the daytime, when you're dressed, she'll never leave this house so long as she hopes to find you there, like that, at night." "Then--Good night, Jimmie." "Good night, dear." She turned away a step or two. Then she turned quickly back to the door and said: "Jimmie." "Yes, dear." "Sometime, when you need it badly, God is going to be _very_ good to you." And she was gone. III Rose Wilding did not rise from her bed the next day, nor, in the daytime, for many days. When she had come home in the evening she had looked, to the casual eye, as robust as ever. But in the morning it was plain that she had fallen into a complete mental and physical collapse. It seemed that she must have gone on upon the sheer strength of terror and worry, until, once finding the little girl, as she thought, the stimulus was gone; and her strength and her interest in life had gone with it. She lay all day like one in a partial doze, evidently not asleep, but paying no attention to anybody or anything about her. Augusta she noticed not at all, except to take from her the food that she brought and to submit passively to her tidying and washing. Wardwell she recognized with a brief, passing glimmer of her old flashing smile, but not even he could arouse her more than momentarily. To her own doctor, whom Augusta had called in, she answered quietly, and without seeming to think that any other explanation was necessary, that she was resting and that she did not think that she would get up. At night when the house had settled into its bedtime quiet, Augusta stole into the little cot at the foot of her mother's bed, and waited. After a little she heard her mother stir softly in the bed, and then heard her get stealthily out to the floor. She came straight to the little cot, and, as she knelt by it, Augusta could feel her warm breath upon her own tumbled hair. Then, satisfied, she stole softly back into bed and went sound asleep.