"I wonder why I lay unconscious on the floor near the dining room door all those hours—until ten o'clock this morning. It was because the knowledge was too much for me to stand—just as it is too much now. And I can't share it with anybody. I'll never be able to get it off my conscience. If I did, they'd hang him—or the other one who——"
At that thought, she screamed aloud, a wild, eerie sound that chilled the blood of even Miss Kelly, accustomed as she was to the cries of suffering and despair. The nurse was at the hysterical girl's side in a moment, holding her quivering body in strong, capable arms.
"What was it? What was it, Miss Fulton?" she asked soothingly.
Maria brushed the back of her hand across her forehead, which was beaded with big, cold drops of perspiration.
"Nothing, Miss Kelly; nothing," she half-moaned. "A bad dream, a nightmare, I guess. Give me something to make me sleep."
She drank eagerly from a glass the nurse put to her lips.
"If I begin to talk in my sleep, Miss Kelly, call me, wake me up, will you?" she begged, the fright still in her voice.
"Yes, I will." This reassuringly while Miss Kelly smoothed the pillows and readjusted the tumbled coverings.
Maria grasped her arm in a grip that hurt.
"But will you?" she demanded sharply. "Promise me!"