’I—I slipped,’ she said, in a curious dazed way. ’I—slipped—and nearly fell, Ally.’ ’Here’s my hand,’ said Alison. And then, half leading and half carrying her, the girl took the wretched little woman to her bed. *CHAPTER XXXVIII.* Alison watched all night long beside her friend. Nancy never let go her hand, but lay holding it, at first in a kind of wretched stupor, staring straight before her, with dry, miserable eyes; then in a sort of palsy of convulsive shivering, and at last in a fit of hysterical weeping, so violent that it seemed to tear her little frame to pieces. Alison soothed and comforted her as best she could, but at first neither peace nor comfort came. The girl’s own thoughts were full of bewilderment. Here, in truth, was love—a creature shaken by it through all the innermost places of her being. Alison, too, loved—but then, how differently! Was it the same passion—this, that destroyed her friend, and that which raised her own soul to heights never dreamed of before she had known Herries? Presently Nancy fell into the light doze of sheer exhaustion, and Alison was able to go and dress herself. But her troubles were by no means over, for Nancy awoke to a plight most piteous—a mental condition almost impossible to cope with. Like one, who, saved from some horrible fate by accident or misadventure, is haunted by phantasmal death in every form, so Nancy, with the tremendous recoil of every natural womanly feeling, beheld herself, again and yet again, on the verge of the great and terrible abyss from which she had been so narrowly and so barely saved. Her mind clung now, with the painful obstinacy and insistence of hysteria, to every symbol and outward sign of safety. Could these stumbling steps of hers be hid? Could she resume, before the men and women of her world, the steady gait of blameless womanhood? With words that harrowed Alison’s very soul, she protested her actual innocence, while she bemoaned the folly that had made her risk her reputation. Oh, she had been mad—blind—headstrong! She saw it all now. ’All my life, Ally,’ she said, her sweet voice roughened with long crying—’all my life I’ve been guided by the impulse of the moment. My passion has done what it will with me, and now it has undone me utterly.’ Then she fell to harping on the theme of secrecy. Was there anyone who would betray her? How much did Jean know, and did she gossip? And Alison—Alison, who knew all—oh, was she sure of herself? Would she never—never by word, or look, or sign—betray her friend? ’Will you swear to me, Ally, that you’ll never tell?’ cried Nancy, raising herself in bed. ’I’d be easier if you’d swear upon the Bible never to betray me!’