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320 of hearing was most acute, and I was conscious that there was only one person in the room, and that that person was a woman. No hands save those of a woman could be so gentle and kindly as those hands were. They were not those kind of hands that are hard all over; hands that when they try to caress you, only dab at you or probe you, as if they were made of a combination of jointed bits of wood, without feeling or sense of touch. No, these were nice, soft, gentle, sympathetic hands; the fingers did not move in rows like a company of soldiers or the teeth of a rake. No, they moved individually, guided in the gentleness of their touch by the veriest love in sympathy with suffering. You must, dear reader, have had experience in hands. What a deal of character there is displayed by this member! I would know a gentle heart at once by a hand shaking. I don't care how big, how clumsy the hand is, if there is sympathy in the grip there is a sympathetic heart behind.

"As I lay in this weak but conscious state,