"Oh, nurse, and I left her!"
There was a sound of such heart-break in Avery's voice that the nurse's grave face softened in sympathy.
"My dear, you couldn't have done anything," she said. "It is just the weakness before the end, and we can do nothing to avert it. What about her mother? Can she come?"
Avery shook her head in despair. "Not for a week."
"Ah!" the nurse said; and that was all. But Avery knew in that moment that only a few hours more remained ere little Jeanie Lorimer passed through the Open Gates.
She would not go to bed that night though the child lay wholly unconscious of her. She knew that she could not sleep.
She did not see Piers again till late. The nurse slipped down to tell him of Jeanie's condition, and he came up, white and sternly composed, and stood for many minutes watching the slender, quick-breathing figure that lay propped among pillows, close to the open window.
Avery could not look at his face during those minutes; she dared not. But when he turned away at length he bent and spoke to her.
"Are you going to stay here?"
"Yes," she whispered.