Love in a Muddle

by Christine Jope-Slade

I nodded. "But it couldn't have been me he was calling for. I—I—why?"

"He is very ill," she said, "that is why I am going to let you see him to-night. I do not think he will live till morning."

I saw that she told me purposely without preamble.

I sat numbed. I could only repeat stupidly: "But it couldn't be me he wanted."

I felt as if she were passing to me some imitations of her aloof snowiness. I, too, felt a little unreal.

"I think you have turned up at the right moment," she said. "Please come, and don't be surprised if he doesn't know you." She put her hand on my shoulder. "Don't give up hope," she said; "nothing is certain—not even in science and surgery."

I think it is in one of Tennyson's things there comes the phrase "into the jaws of Hell"; it crept into my mind when I saw Walter Markham.

I have never seen anything so terrible or so pathetic. He was conscious.

"Why, it's Pam!" he said weakly. "Dear little, funny little Pam." Then earnestly, with a terrible effort to concentrate. "Are you real?" He took my hand and felt it tremblingly. "You're real," he said.

The matron left us alone.