There were lines upon my face that I was stranger to, and with which I made reluctant acquaintance. And my hair was liberally streaked with grey. I had put on ten years, at least. I felt old, too, that was the worst of it--old, ill and thick-blooded and infinitely world-weary. I felt a hunger for the desert and big open spaces; a need to hasten from the grinding, selfish life of cities, with their secret crimes and gilded vices and dull-herded groping after sordid happiness. But I did not wish to go alone. At a little after eight o'clock I entered the Walsingham and demanded to see Miss Ottley's head nurse. She was at breakfast, but the waiter told me that Miss Ottley had spent a good night and was still asleep, so I was content to wait. Afterwards, I had to lie to the nurse in order to be permitted to see the invalid. I told her that I was Miss Ottley's nearest living relative, and I suppressed the fact of my medical qualifications. The woman, otherwise, would have referred me to the physicians, who had employed her, and I should have been put off for hours. As it was, it required all my powers of persuasion to induce her to admit me to the sick room. But I prevailed on her at last, with a show of stern authority, and a curt intimation that her position depended on my complaisance. The falsehood is not one that I feel any shame at, for I knew what an effect my appearance would make in the patient, and I was determined, at all costs, to be with her at the moment of her waking. I shall pass over the preliminary period that I spent beside her bed. It is too full of sorrow to recall with anything but misery. The poor girl was as frail and wan as any spirit. They had cut off all her glorious hair, and the hand I kissed, which lay so weakly on the coverlid, was whiter than a snowflake, and almost as destitute of vigour. She slept as gently as a weary babe, and it was hard at first to believe thoroughly she lived. But at length she sighed and her great eyes slowly opened and looked up questioningly into mine. She thought that she was dead and that my ghost had sought her out. "Hugh!" she whispered, and a soft smile lighted her face and made it infinitely lovely, though so wan. "I knew that I should find you, dear," she sighed. "And so I could not help but pray to die. Will God punish us for that?" But I kissed her on the lips--the first long kiss of love that I had known--or she--and she came back warm with quickened hope and will to live within my arms. And all was well with us.