There was no difficulty nor delay in getting upstairs, and in an incredibly short time the place had assumed the air of hushed solemnity that always seems to overhang the spot where illness is.
Nan crouched outside the threshold of the sick-room and listened to the low sounds within with a feeling of overwhelming guilt at her heart. She dared not go in.
At last the door was opened, and the physician stepped forward. He saw Nan cowering in the gloom.
"What is this?" he asked kindly.
Nan dragged herself up painfully, as though her limbs had been made of lead.
"Have I—have I—killed her?" she managed to gasp.
The doctor bent on her a pitying look.
"Killed her?" he repeated. "I do not know what you mean. Do you mean will she die? No, my child, not if we can help it—and God grant we may. But it may be long, very long, before she is well. She has been badly hurt, poor little soul!"
Then followed a term of harrowing suspense. Nights when Nan thought the sun had forgotten how to rise—so long they seemed and never ending.
The fever that followed the first season of lethargy raged fierce and hot for many a day, and the delirium that accompanied it was difficult to quell. It seemed at times as though it must burn the patient's very life away. It was during these days that Nan learned how much she had caused her friend to suffer. What, in her moments of consciousness, she had never permitted to pass her lips, now in these hours of delirium she dwelt on and repeated over and over. It was of Nan, always of Nan that she spoke.