I took the medicine. She turned away once more.
“Don't go,” I repeated.
“I am not going. Not for the present.”
I was quite contented with the present. The future had no charms just then. I lay there, looking at her. She was paler and thinner than she had been when she left Mayberry, almost as pale and thin as when I first met her in the back room of Mrs. Briggs' lodging house. And there was another change, a subtle, undefinable change in her manner and appearance that puzzled me. Then I realized what it was; she had grown older, more mature. In Mayberry she had been an extraordinarily pretty girl. Now she was a beautiful woman. These last weeks had worked the change. And I began to understand what she had undergone during those weeks.
“Have you been with me ever since it happened—since I was hurt?” I asked, suddenly.
“Yes, of course.”
“All night?”
She smiled. “There was very little of the night left,” she answered.
“But you have had no rest at all. You must be worn out.”
“Oh, no; I am used to it. My—” with a slight pause before the word—“work of late has accustomed me to resting in the daytime. And I shall rest by and by, when my aunt—when Miss Cahoon comes.”