"Oh! poor fellow!" Her eyes filled with tears, and she looked at him with that look which is not the love of a woman for a man, or of a lover for a lover, but that latent spirit of care and motherhood which is in every woman who is more woman than man.

For there are women who are more men than women.
For himself, a new fact struck home in him.

For the first time since his illness he felt that he was doomed.

That little spot of blood in the crumpled handkerchief which had flashed past his eye was the fatal message he had sought to elude for months past.

A hopeless and ironical misery shot through him.