Page:The Fate of Fenella (1892).djvu/166

 during which, with the gold locks short cropped, and the sweet face fever-flushed and unrecognizable, Fenella lay in bed, and shrieked in her delirium that Frank did not do it, that she did; that Frank hated her because she had done it, but she had not done it. There was blood on her hands, horrible blood, human blood. There was blood on his hands, but she would kiss them. She was swimming in blood, drowning in blood, but Frank would save her. Ronny was on the shore, waiting for her, bright-faced Ronny, waiting to kiss away the stains from them both. And then she would call out again that she was drowning, and call for Frank, always for Frank, in agonized, delirious shrieks.

"Doctor! doctor!" He held him with hands grown thin and wasted, spoke to him in a voice all broken with tears, looked at him with eyes dim with wild, convulsive crying: "Will she live? will she live?"

The doctor was a man who had studied humanity as well as physic.

"I think so," he answered; "there is room for hope. Every day gained brings us nearer to it. If once she sleeps, sleeps naturally, I think—she is saved." He hesitated, and Frank, hanging on his words, pressed him further.

"She will wake to reason—to mental restfulness?"

He was a man; he had heard his patient in