The Sister, guessing the horror he felt at the thought that Marthe should be housed with such obvious lunatics, offered him some slight reassurance as she ushered him into an apartment that looked like a schoolroom. "Lamielle," she said, startling him with the official appellation for poor Marthe, "should really be in another section, for she is quite herself again, but they are so crowded there isn't room."
"Will she remain lucid?" asked Grover, half dreading that his voice would echo in these precincts and come back to him in a form as hideous as the meaningless sounds he had been hearing.
The Sister shook her head and turned away, closing the door and leaving him to stare at a lithochrome of Saint Geneviève coming to the rescue of a beleaguered Paris.
After a long wait during which he hadn't the courage to sit down, he heard footsteps and a voice,—strong, pleasant, commanding,—then something that sounded like a scuffle. When the door opened he saw a strange, almost dumpy little figure shrinking behind the white apron of a tall old woman who was evidently the head nurse. Dressed in a blue mother-hubbard that looked as though it might have been made of mattress ticking, with her thin brown hair drawn tightly back,—where were the soft golden curls?—and her mouth almost empty of teeth,—had she bashed them all out in a frenzy?—Marthe let herself be coaxed and pushed into the room, to the accompaniment of re-
