We got Tony then. He looked desperate and helpless, as any man does in the presence of sickness. He stood looking down at her, his face almost as white as hers.

“What happened?” he asked. “She was all right last night.”

“She was all right this morning,” said Hilda tearfully. “She ate a good breakfast, and looked over her mail and the papers. Then she took a bath and I dressed her, or partly. I left her to get something I had pressed, and when I came back she was on the bathroom floor. I thought she was dead.”

She burst into tears, and it was some time before she could answer our questions. No, she was certain the telephone had not rung, nor had Mrs. Wainwright had any bad news. The mail was there on the desk in the boudoir. There had been only four letters and after glancing at them Maud had told her to give them to me. “Invitations and bills,” she had said. “Give them to Miss Pat, Hilda.”

Tony looked at her suddenly.

“Has my wife been in, Hilda?”

“I don’t think so. I don’t think she’s awake yet.”

All this time we were waiting for Bill. Tony alternated from bed to window, Hilda moaned under her breath, and I stood by Maud’s bed, feeling helpless. Once she opened her eyes, and I saw she wanted to say something. I stooped over the bed.

“Get Dwight,” she said in a whisper. “Dwight,” and slid off again into a stupor.

It was a bad day. Bill Sterling, looking as though he had been up all night, came up with an oxygen tank and mask which had to answer until the oxygen tent arrived from the hospital. He gave her a hypodermic at once. After that there was nothing to do but wait. Tony, deprived of cigarettes because the oxygen was inflammable, paced the floor. I dressed and came back. Amy Richards arrived and threw out Hilda, who was still hysterical. A heart specialist from the city drove up in a hurry, had a conference with Bill, and asked Tony if she had had a shock or been under a long strain. Tony said dryly that there had been some strain; his wife was staying in the house. The heart specialist nodded gravely, and later ate a hearty lunch.

That is all I remember of the morning. By afternoon Maud was better. Except for her lips, the blue look had gone, but she was still under the influence of morphia. She lay in a semistupor under the cellophane curtains of the oxygen tent, and it was evening and I was relieving Amy for her dinner when she opened her eyes and looked at me.

“What’s this thing?” she whispered, indicating the tent. “And who’s that man, Pat?”

I did not wonder. Her big bed had been moved out into the room to allow space for the large cylinders behind it; and as she spoke a strange man tiptoed into the room, to inspect the pressure and to pack ice into a tank to cool the oxygen.