She was preparing to leave her room for the dining room in the hotel one morning—(she always breakfasted early with him these days) when word was brought her that her son was ill. She rushed into his room to find that the boy had collapsed as he tried to leave his bed. The physician who was hastily summoned advised an immediate removal, and before an hour had passed, Howard Benton was in a small room in a sanitarium, tossing in the feverish delirium of typhoid. The weeks he laid there passed into months; one complication on another set in, for his constitution was in a badly run-down condition, owing to the months of anxiety he had been obliged to endure during his trial. There was something martyrlike in the way Marjorie managed to bear up under her heavy cross. She grew haggard and pale as she hovered near the bedside of her boy day and night. It was only when the doctor threatened to bar her from the room entirely, that she consented to go home for a few hours’ rest at night. But even then she didn’t rest. She either paced the floor in her anguish and despair, or she knelt beside her bed praying to God not to take her beloved boy from her now—now that she had just found him. And God in His great mercy, heard her prayers, for Howard began slowly to fight his way back again to health and strength. It was then, in these days of convalescence that the wonderful devotion between mother and son became noticeable to everyone connected with the sanitarium. Outside of going to her room for a few hours at night, she never left him for a minute. She read to him by the hour, played all sorts of games with him, such as a small boy might have enjoyed, and when he was able to be taken out a bit, she wheeled him up and down the corridor, or out into the garden without ever tiring. On his part, he was never happy unless she was beside him. He wouldn’t go to sleep at night without holding her hands, and in the morning, if she was delayed ten minutes in arriving, he would insist upon the nurse telephoning to find out whether anything had happened. It was beautiful—this great love—to all who witnessed it. Especially was it so to Marjorie herself. She fairly reveled in it. Her soul, love-starved for so many years, reached out passionately for this new-found joy. In Howard’s presence she was always smiling and cheerful. Never for a moment did she permit him to think that there was anything wrong. No matter how hard she would be obliged to struggle, she would never reveal to him the true state of their affairs until he had completely recovered.