His suffering and imminent death, which she was able to alleviate and retard somewhat, worked upon her pity and compassion so that she forgot her own plight.

Half the night she was tending him, cooling his fever, holding him quiet.

Well she realized that but for her ministrations he would have died.

At length he went to sleep.
And Ellen, sitting beside him in the lonely, silent darkness of that late hour, received again the intimation of nature, those vague and nameless stirrings of her innermost being, those whisperings out of the night and the forest and the sky.

Something great would not let go of her soul.