Nobody knew what he meant or guessed that in that instant’s pause he had passed a life sentence upon himself. His words hardly reached Hermione’s maddened and excited brain, but something in his presence succeeded in breaking in upon the morbid concentration of her mind. The pupils of her eyes contracted suddenly: she had recognised him. A few moments later the screaming began again, but it had lost its regularity, there were moments when it fell into vague mutterings. Dr. Raymond stepped forward and felt her pulse again. “I think the sedative is taking hold now,” he said with satisfaction. Mr. Brett drew an arm chair forward beside the bed. “I’ll stay here till morning,” he said to the doctor. “You carry out your part of the programme now. I guess the Princess don’t need an audience for a nap.” Dr. Raymond cleared the room except for Nurse Davies, and after giving her a few orders withdrew. It was a puzzling case, but there was no doubt the brain crisis was over. Mr. Brett drew out of his dressing-gown pocket a small and much worn book. It was called “The Casting Away of Mrs. Lecks and Mrs. Aleshine,” by Frank Stockton. Mr. Brett preferred it to any other novel. Hermione still screamed at irregular intervals, but during one of her quieter moments Mr. Brett said to the Nurse, “Now Nurse Davies it isn’t going to do a mite of good the two of us Agag-ing round. You just go into the next room and get a little rest. If there’s any change in the Princess’s condition I’ll wake you.” Nurse Davies hesitated, but to her surprise Hermione slowly opened her eyes and looked at her with apparent consciousness. “Yes,” she said, “leave me with my father.” Then she closed her eyes again. When Mr. Brett and Hermione were alone, Mr. Brett drew up the blind and opened the window near him, then he returned to his arm chair, pulled a thick rug over his knees, arranged the reading lamp, so that it shed a light over Hermione’s face, and settled to his reading. For an hour or more Hermione slept the deep sleep of intense exhaustion, then she woke with a start and fixed her strained eyes on her father’s face. “Is that you Papa?” she asked quickly. “Am I going to die?” Mr. Brett shook his head. “No, Hermione,” he said, “you’ll live on yet a while. I’m not a betting man, but I’d take odds on it. Do you want that I should read out loud to you ‘The Casting Away of Mrs. Lecks and Mrs. Aleshine’? I don’t know a book more calculated to soothe the sick or enliven the down-hearted. I don’t say it’s like life—but it’s the way life might be like if we took irregular things more regularly.” Hermione shook her head. “No, I don’t want to be read to,” she whispered. “I want to talk to you. I think I can now. I can see what I want to say.” Mr. Brett leaned forward and lit a spirit lamp beside the bed. “Well,” he said, “let’s have some soup first. You can talk all you like on soup, but if you start on an empty stomach there’s no saying where you’ll land up on.”