Page:The Black Cat v01no05 (1896-02).pdf/40

38 have fallen; caught at the bed and grasped a long thick rope of hair. She lifted it and laid it alongside the figure it evidently belonged to.

"Water, water!" moaned the inarticulate voice again, close to her ear. The nurse went out, much puzzled, and returned with a glass. Two icy hands touched hers as she held it to the lips.

"How cold you are!" she exclaimed, "and this room is like a frozen—frozen tomb," she added. "You must get warm."

"No, no!" said the voice, ending in a low, wailing moan.

The nurse looked curiously down at the face on the pillow. Scarcely anything was visible but two large dark eyes and two immensely long snake-like plaits of hair.

"Did you come in to-night? Are you waiting for an operation?" asked the perplexed nurse.

"Yes." The voice was inarticulate again.

"How strange the day nurse or the head nurse did not tell me. I don't know what to make of it, at all. You are sure you do not want any light or heat?"

The reply was so inarticulate that she bent down to listen. A faint odor turned her quite sick. She went out hastily into the corridor, leaving the door ajar. She was worried; nay, more, she was conscious of a feeling a trained nurse has no excuse for. She had a crawly sensation along her spine.

"I must be dreaming," she said to herself angrily.

She went back to her chair and table, and, in spite of heaviness and sleepiness, listened for the bells with a qualm of absolute fright whenever the sound came from the end of the corridor.

At last, just before daybreak, the bell she was straining her ears for, rang again.

She plunged her head into cold water, took a glass in her hand, and approached the Prince Ward. For a second she paused at the door; a wild impulse to dash down the glass of water and rush shrieking through the corridor almost overpowered her for a heart-beat. Then her training reasserted itself; she smiled satirically in her own face and went in, leaving, nevertheless, the door wide open behind her. She paused beside the bed.

"Thirsty again? I have brought some water for you."