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the recent happenings, coming out of chill cold and going into a burning fever, buried in the oblivion of delirium, opening her white lips only to moan in low, helpless quiet when the cool hand of the doctor was laid on her hot forehead. Once or twice she opened her eyes and looked up at him with a frightened glance, fearful, questioning, and then slowly her eyelids dropped and closed over the troubled eyes, as if satisfied. She drew a soft little sigh and seemed to rest more quietly. It strangely touched the young doctor, as if somehow she was depending upon him, as if in some mysterious way she understood that he had saved her from death in the storm.
    Yet if she had any memory of what had brought her to this pass, in the midst of her delirium and fever, he could not tell. She was very ill of course. Pneumonia had taken possession of her, and there seemed to be no strength in her to resist the disease. Sometimes he wondered if perhaps death would be a sweet release to her from things worse than death. Of course, he did not know anything about her, had no means of even guessing, save from the sweet, sad droop of the lovely lips.
    Yet more and more he longed to save her, to bring her back to life and see her smile once, to know that he had been able to lift the shadow from the pitiful, tired young face.
    As a young doctor, he should not let himself be interested in this way in a patient. Interest like that was apt to cloud his mind and blunt his decisions. And this girl was nothing to him. Yet whenever he said that to himself he kept seeing her so white and still lying in that snow, sinking into a quick death, and his heart reached out and longed to help her. When the disease itself was practically conquered, there was the great weakness to deal with, the utter listlessness and apathy.
    Sometimes, when her nurse was busy elsewhere, he would come and sit beside her for a few minutes and study the sweet, quiet face. Now and again he would take the little inert hand in his and hold it gently, and once he fancied that the fingers nestled to his, but perhaps that was mere imagination.
    Once as he sat thus he bowed his head and murmured almost inaudibly, “Oh God, You know what this is. Grant me knowledge to help.”
    And when he looked at her again her eyes were open, just for an instant. She seemed to be studying him with a question in her glance, and when he smiled at her there came a faint semblance of a smile to her lips. But then her eyes closed and the smile was gone.
    Howard Sterling was not a praying man, and he couldn’t understand why he had uttered that sudden unpremeditated petition, but somehow he felt after that smile that God had heard and answered in a way. Afterward he told himself he was a fool to make so much of this incident of the girl and he ought to get away from it and let somebody else take up her case. Perhaps it would be a good thing for him to take a few days off and make that promised visit to Rose, get his mind off the hospital and everything connected with it. Rose would be off him for life if he didn’t do something about keeping his promise.
    But somehow he couldn’t go. He kept putting it off again and again for various little reasons, until one night he told himself that he really didn’t
want
to go until he saw a decided improvement in this girl. That would make Rose furious if she knew it, but it was true nevertheless, and of course it was true that he ought not to be so obsessed with the case of an unknown, mysterious girl.
    But it would soon be spring. The snow was gone, and in places the trees were beginning to take on a semblance of greenness. If the girl could get out into the open and breathe the springtime in the air, it would certainly give her new life. Perhaps he might even venture to take her out riding someday when she was stronger, and try to coax from her a little of her story. It did seem as if after all this time they ought to somehow be finding her people. If she were