“There is no if about it,” Dr. Winthrop interposed, in an ominously quiet tone; “she is my wife, and that entitles her to proper courtesy without regard to any conditions. But I was about to relate how I became acquainted with Salome, and why I married her. As you know, I was intending to join you abroad last fall, when we were all to go to Berlin to make the acquaintance of the Rochesters. But owing to the epidemic which broke out here, I was obliged to give up the trip for a time. Then I received a letter from my classmate, Dr. Cutler, reminding me of my promise to join him in Boston, to investigate the manner of conducting the different hospitals, and the treatment of certain cases in which we are specially interested. As he was at liberty then, and might not be again for some time, I felt obliged to go and to postpone my trip abroad until later, as I wrote to you. “I arrived in Boston late one terribly stormy evening, but upon going to a hotel found it full; there was only one room to be had—a small one that had once been used as a storeroom, and which could only be heated by a coal stove. It was too stormy for me to go out again, and so I decided to put up with such accommodations as I could get. I ordered a fire to be made in the room, so that it might be comfortably warm by the time I had eaten my supper. Then, wearied out with my long, cold journey, I determined to go at once to bed. I found my room small, but comfortable, and having carefully arranged the damper in the pipe of the stove so that the gas would escape up the chimney, and opened the door so that I might have good ventilation, I retired. By some means, however, the damper became closed during the night—you can easily imagine with what result—the room gradually filled with carbonic acid gas, and I became asphyxiated.” “O True!” cried Evelyn Winthrop in a tone of horror, while his mother’s face grew deadly white at this startling statement. “I was found the next morning in an almost dying condition, and the hotel being near the City Hospital I was, fortunately, taken thither for treatment. “There everything that could be thought of to resuscitate me was tried; but I was too far gone for ordinary remedies to have any effect, and as a last resort the head physician suggested the transfusion of blood. But even this seemed likely to fail, as no one could be found who was willing to have his veins opened to supply the necessary blood. Dr. Hunt grew nearly frantic and also indignant. He said he would gladly have supplied it from his own veins only there was no one else in the hospital whom he could trust to perform the operation. But just as he began to fear that he must give up the experiment and let me die, one of the nurses from the women’s department made her appearance. He told her his dilemma and she instantly said: