When he looked up from his writing it was a quarter to one. Had the woman gone and he not heard her pass? How was Driscoll? It was awfully quiet overhead. With a tightening of the nerves he took his lamp and hurried up-stairs. He knocked softly. No answer. Noiselessly, so that the invalid should not be wakened, if indeed he were not ... he opened the door. Driscoll was asleep, and breathing audibly. The woman was asleep too, sitting on the floor, her head leaning against the side of the bed, Driscoll's hand in one of hers. She looked still younger in the peace of sleep, though obviously older than Driscoll, softened out of her customary wooden immobility. Gano felt that he was seeing her real face for the first time: the mask had fallen. She could never have been pretty, but there was something in her face of nobility that prevented a man from coming to an easy conclusion about her. Her black hair was sharply silhouetted against the white sheet. The hand that held Driscoll's wore a plain gold marriage-ring. She seemed to feel the light or the scrutiny of a strange glance, for she stirred and opened her gray eyes. Gano was momentarily embarrassed--she not in the least. She turned quickly to look at the sleeper. "Wait!" she whispered, as Gano seemed to be turning away. She put her finger on the sick man's pulse, and, still kneeling there, counted the beats with absorbed, unselfconscious face. Gano was struck again with the "mother" quality in the woman. It gave all she did a definite modesty. She was getting up. "Can you spare the light?" she whispered. "I forgot to bring--" "Of course," interrupted Gano. He set the lamp down, and turned to the door. "Wait a moment." She hung the _Figaro_ over the back of the chair between the sleeper and the light, then, quietly and without haste, she took her brown cape and hat off the peg and put them on. She leaned a moment over the sleeper, and then, "Come!" she signed rather then said, and they went softly out. At the foot of the stairs she stopped. "Can you get a candle and a piece of paper?" "Yes; this is my room," said Gano, opening his door. The moonlight came palely in at the single window. Without hesitation she had followed him. He lit the candle by his bed. "I want to leave you my address," she said. "I think he'll be all right now, but if he should be worse don't leave him; send some one to this address--send a _fiacre_." She scribbled on the piece of paper, and laid it by the candle. "Do you think I ought to sit up with him?" Gano asked, watching her intently. "No need to sit up; you can sleep on the sofa, can't you, or--" "Or on the floor?" he asked, smiling a little at her matter-of-factness. "Or on the floor," she repeated quietly. "Good-night." She went out. "Sha'n't I get you a cab?" "No; I shall walk. Good-night;" and she was gone. On the paper was written: "_Mrs. Mary Burne, 21 Rue Blanche._" CHAPTER XVI