Page:Maud Howe - Atlanta in the South.djvu/272

 else forgotten in that blissful tumult of pain and pleasure which she now knew to be Love,—

When Sister Gabrielle returned with the basket, she found her visitor fled, and instead of the trembling girl she had left on the threshold, the tall figure of Philip Rondelet, who had sat watching his friend's slumber that afternoon from the arm-chair in the shadow of the doorway.

"You are going, Doctor?"

"Yes, he is doing well. There is no change to be made in the treatment. I shall not be back again to-night. Good-by."

The Doctor's voice sounded a little strangely, the sister thought, and his pale face and deep eyes wore an expression she had never seen in them before. "He is overworked," she said to herself. "There is more of the spirit than the flesh about that man, or he could not endure what he does."

The Doctor's face haunted the nun that night, and she added a prayer for the peace of his soul to the long list of requirements which in a perfect, childlike faith she sent up to the ever-gracious and accessible Mother of God.