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 “You were stupefied, but you must have got up and tried to get to the door before you were over¬ come. I was on the second floor when I heard you fall. I’d never heard anyone fall before, that I can remember, but I seemed to know just what it was.”

“I’m sorry to have given you a fright. I hope the gas hasn’t made your head ache.”

“All’s well that ends well, as they say. But I doubt if you ought to be talking, sir. Could you go to sleep again? I can stay till morning, if you prefer.”

“I’d be greatly obliged if you would stay the night with me, Augusta. It would be a comfort. I seem to feel rather lonely—for the first time in months.”

“That’s because your family are coming home. Very well, sir.”

“You do a good deal of this sort of thing—watching and sitting up with people, don’t you?”

“Well, when I happen to be sewing in a house where there’s sickness, I am sometimes called upon.”

Augusta sat down by the table and again took up her little religious book. St. Peter, with half-closed eyes, lay watching her—regarding in her humankind, as if after a definite absence from the world of men and women. If he had thought of Augusta sooner, he would have got up from the