“What! Leave Kittie now?” whispered Marion in horror.
“She is dead,” said Miss Williams, with a quick glance at Kittie. “The living first, Miss Marlowe, the living and suffering.”
Marion went mutely across the ward, mastering her grief as she went. In that one short week she had learned to love Kittie.
“It will soon kill me at this rate,” she reasoned to herself. “Oh, I must learn not to sympathize so deeply with my patients.”
At sunrise the next morning Marion stood by one of the windows of the hospital, looking out upon the water, that glinted and gleamed all around her.
A group of convicts were busy mending a broken spot in the sea-wall, their two guards standing idly by, each armed with a rifle.
“Here is the picture Kittie spoke of,” said Miss Williams, coming up to her. “You can look at it, Miss Marlowe, and then you must go to bed. It is not necessary for you to work day and night, even if you are a ‘probationer.’”
She slipped a picture into Marion’s hand and went away. She was too busy herself to think of sleeping. A great beam of the golden sun fell upon the window panes at that instant and Marion’s eyes were slightly dazzled as she looked at the picture.
Then with a stifled scream Marion dropped the bit of pasteboard from her hand.
It was a picture of Reginald Brookes—frank, blue-eyed and handsome!