As Alice said this she came perilously near the histrionic standard of the tragic stage. Josie rose, looked at her in surprise, in which there seemed to be some defiance, and walked steadily out to the parlor. I was glad to be out of the affair, and went back to Jim. I stood regarding my broken and forsaken friend, in watching whose uneasy sleep I forgot the crisis downstairs, when I was startled and angered by the slamming of the front door, and heard a carriage rattle furiously away down the street.

Soon I heard the rustle of skirts, and looked up, thinking to see my wife. But it was Josie. She came in, as if she were the regularly ordained nurse, and stepped to the bedside of the sleeping patient. The broken arm in its swathings lay partly uncovered; and across his wounded brow was stretched a broad bandage, below which his face showed pale and weary-looking, in the half-stupor of his deathlike slumber: for he had become strangely quiet. His uninjured arm lay inertly on the counterpane beside him.

She took his hand, and, seating herself on the bed, began softly stroking and patting the hand, gazing all the time in his face. He stirred, and, turning his eyes toward her, awoke.

"Don't move, my darling," said she quietly, and as if she had been for a long, long time quite in the habit of so speaking to him; "don't move, or you'll hurt your arm." Then she bent down her head, lower and lower, until her cheek touched his.

"I've come to sit with you, Jim, dear," said she, softly--"if you want me--if I can do you any good."

"I want you, always," said he.

She stooped again, and this time laid her lips lingeringly on his; and his arm stole about the slim waist.

"If you'll just get well," she whispered, "you may have me--always!"

He pa.s.sed his fingers over her hair, and kissed her again and again.

Then he looked at her long and earnestly.

"Where's Al?" said he; "I want Al!"

I came forward promptly. I thought that this violation of the doctor's regulation requiring rest and quiet had gone quite far enough.

"Al," said he, still holding her hand, "do you remember out there by the windmill tower that night, and the petunias and four-o'clocks?"

"Yes, Jim, I remember," said I. "But you mustn't talk any more now."

"No, I won't," said he, and went right on; "but even before that, and ever since, I haven't wanted anything we've been trying so hard to get, half as much as I've wanted Josie; and now--we lost the fight, didn't we? Things have been slipping away from us, haven't they? Gone, aren't they?"

"Go to sleep now, Jim," said I. "Plenty of time for those things when you wake up."

"Yes," said he; "but before I do, I want you to tell me one thing, honest injun, hope to die, you know!"

"Yes," said I; "what is it, Jim?"

"I've been seeing a lot of funny things in the dark corners about here; but this seems more real than any of them," he went on; "and I want you to tell me--_is this really Josie_?"

"Really," I a.s.sured him, "really, it is."

"Oh, Jim, Jim!" she cried, "have you learned to doubt my reality, just because I'm kind! Why, I'm going to be good to you now, dearest, always, always! And kinder than you ever dreamed, Jim. And I'm going to show you that everything has not slipped away from you, my poor, poor boy; and that, whatever may come, I shall be with you always. Only get well; only get well!"

"Josie," said he, smiling wanly, "you couldn't kill me--now--not with an ax!"

THE END.

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