dinner, managed to go up and down the long flight of stairs twice each
day.

Placid as she was, the table was not a cheerful place, for the faces of
the other two were haggard and drawn, and neither made more than a
pretence of eating. Daily bulletins came from the other house as to
Allison's condition, and Madame was in constant communication by
telegraph with Colonel Kent. She kept him reassured as much as possible,
and did not tell him of Allison's ineradicable delusion that his father
was dead.

Allison's note was given to Isabel at luncheon the day after it was
written, having been delayed in delivery the night before until after
she was asleep. With it was a letter from her mother, which had come in
the noon mail.

She opened Allison's note first, read it, and put it back into the
envelope. Her mother's letter was almost equally brief. That, too, she
returned to its envelope without comment.

"How is your mother, Isabel?" inquired Madame, having caught a glimpse
of the bold, dashing superscription which was familiar, though
infrequent.

"She's all right," Isabel answered, breaking open a hot muffin. "It's
funny that it should come at the same time as the other."

"Why?" asked Rose, merely for the sake of making conversation.

"Because just as Mamma writes to tell me that marriage is slavery, but
that if he can take care of me and Aunt Francesca approves of him, it
will be all right, Allison writes and releases me from the engagement."

"Poor boy!" sighed Madame.

"I don't know why you should say 'poor boy,'" Isabel observed, rather
fretfully. "He's not very ill if he can write letters. I'm sure I don't
feel like writing any."

"I wasn't thinking of that," said Madame, half to herself.

"And as for his releasing me," Isabel went on, coolly, "I'm glad he was
decent enough to do it and save me the trouble of releasing myself."

Rose got to her feet somehow, her face deathly white. "Do you mean," she
cried, "that you would think for a minute of accepting release?"

"Why, certainly," the girl replied, in astonishment. "Why not? He says
himself that he can't ask me to marry a cripple."

Rose winced visibly. "Isabel!" she breathed. "Oh, Isabel!"

"My dear," said Madame, with such kindness as she could muster, "have
you forgotten that he saved you from death, or worse?"

"He didn't do anything for me but to tell me to jump. I did more for him
than that. Nobody seems to think it was anything for me to get up out of
the dust, with my best white dress all ruined and my face scratched and
my ankle sprained and one arm bleeding, and help the Crosbys carry a
heavy man to their machine and lay him on the back seat."

"I thought the Crosbys carried him," put in Madame. "They're strong
enough to do it, I should think."

"Well, I helped. I had to take all that nasty raw meat out of the back
seat and throw it out in the ditch to the dogs, and stand up all the way
home, bruised as I was, to keep him from falling off the seat. We were
in a perfect bedlam there for a while, but it doesn't seem to make any
difference to anybody. Nobody cares what happens to me."

"Besides," she went on, with her voice raised to a high pitch by
excitement, "I don't see why I should be expected to marry a man with
only one hand. He can't play any more, and if he can't play, how can he
make any money to take care of me, even if I should tie myself to him
for life? Do you expect me to take in washing and take care of him?"

"Isabel," said Madame, coldly, "please stop talking so loudly and please
listen for a moment. Nobody expects you to marry a man whom, for any
reason on earth, you do not love well enough to marry. Kindly consider
that as something to be settled in accordance with your own wishes and
desires."

"Certainly,"' interrupted the girl. "I'd like to see anybody force me to
marry him!"

Madame compressed her lips into a thin, tight line, and her face became
stern, even hard. She clenched her small hands tightly and her breath
came quickly. A red spot burned on either cheek.

Never having seen Madame angry before, Rose was almost frightened. She
herself was not angry, but hurt--for him. At the moment she heard of the
accident, her love for him had transcended the bounds of self and merged
into prayer for him and for his good, whatever that might prove to be.

"Isabel," said Rose, very softly, "will you do one thing for me?"

"What?" Isabel demanded, suspiciously.

"Listen, dear. For me, if not for him, will you go to him, and--well,
simply be kind? Don't let him think that this terrible thing has
separated him from you or changed your love. Wait until he is strong and
well again before you tell him. Will you, please?"

Isabel's flushed face took on the expression of outraged virtue. "I
don't know why I should be expected to lie," she remarked evasively,
with a subtle change of manner.

Madame Bernard cleared her throat. "Your love was a lie," she said, in a
tone that neither of them had ever heard her use before. "One more won't
matter."

Isabel fidgeted in her chair and nervously tapped the edge of her plate
with her fork. "I haven't heard anybody say," she began, with the air of
one scoring a fine point, "that his father doesn't love him, and yet he
hasn't gone near him--hasn't even seen him since we were hurt. If
Colonel Kent can stay away from him, I don't know why I can't."

The argument seemed unanswerable, for neither Madame nor Rose spoke.
They sat with averted eyes until the silence became oppressive, and
Isabel, with ostentatious difficulty, pushed back her chair and limped
painfully out of the room.

When she had locked her own door, she was more at ease, and began to
survey her unpleasant situation. Nobody seemed to consider her at all--
it was only Allison, and everything and everybody, apparently, must be
sacrificed for him. Just because she had promised to marry him, when he
had both hands, they wanted her to go on with it, in spite of the fact
that he saw it was impossible.

Isabel sighed heavily. Nobody knew how keenly disappointed she was. She
had written to her few friends, told them about her engagement ring, the
plans made for her trousseau, the promised touring car, and the
brilliant social career that lay before her as the wife of a famous
violinist.

She pictured a triumphal tour from city to city, with the leaders of
fashion everywhere vying with each other in entertaining them--or, at
least, her. It would, of course, be necessary for Allison to play
occasionally in the evening and they would miss a great deal on that
account, but her days would be free, and she could cancel all her own
social obligations by complimentary tickets and suppers after the
concerts.

She had planned it all as she took lazy stitches in her dainty lingerie.
Aunt Francesca and Rose had been helping her, but the whole thing had
stopped suddenly. It seemed rather selfish of them not to go on with it,
for lingerie was always useful, and even though she should not marry
Allison, it was not at all improbable that she would marry someone else.

If she could find anybody who had plenty of money and would be good to
her, she knew that she would encounter no parental opposition, in spite
of Mrs. Ross's pronounced views upon the slavery of matrimony.

Allison had been very decent in releasing her from her awkward
predicament. He had even arranged it so that no answer was necessary and
she need not even see him again. She had the natural shrinking of the
healthy young animal from its own stricken kind. It would be much nicer
not to see him again.

But, if he could write letters now, it would not be long before he would
be able to come over, though his hand had not yet been taken off. It was
too bad, for everything had been very pleasant until the accident. She
had missed Allison's daily visits and had probably lost the touring car,
though as she had taken pains to find out, it had fallen into the ditch
and had been injured very little.

Aunt Francesca and Rose had been queer ever since it happened. After
Colonel Kent and the servants and the twins had lifted Allison out of
"The Yellow Peril" and carried him up to his own room on an improvised
stretcher, while someone else was telephoning for every doctor in the
neighbourhood, the twins had taken her home. She had insisted upon their
helping her up the steps, and as soon as Aunt Francesca and Rose heard
the news, they had paid no attention to her at all, but, with one voice,
had demanded that the twins should take them to Kent's immediately.

They had gone without even stopping for their hats, and left her wholly
to the servants. Even when they had come home, late at night, in their
own carriage, it was over half an hour before Aunt Francesca came to her
room, so overburdened with selfish grief that she did not even listen to
the recital of Isabel's numerous bruises.

Perhaps it would be best to go away, though the city was terrible in
Summer, and she had only money enough to take her to the hotel where her
mother retained a suite of three rooms. If Aunt Francesca and Rose would
leave her alone in the house long enough, and she could pack a suit-case
and get the carriage just in time to take her to the train, she could
write a formal note and ask to have the rest of her things sent by
express. If there were a late train, or one very early in the morning,
she could probably manage it, even without the carriage, but, on
consulting the time-table, she found that trains did not run at hours
suitable for escape.

However, it was just as well to pack while she had time. She could keep
the suit-case hidden until the auspicious moment arrived. It would only
take a moment to open it and sweep her toilet articles into it from the
top of her dresser.

She had just taken a fresh shirtwaist out of the drawer when there was a
light, determined rap at the door. When she opened it, she was much
astonished to see Aunt Francesca come in, dressed for a drive.

"Are you almost ready, Isabel?" she asked, politely.

"Ready," gasped the girl. "For what?"

It seemed for the moment as though she had been anticipated in her
departure and was about to be put out of the house.

"To drive over to Kent's," answered Madame, imperturbably. From her
manner one would have thought the drive had been long planned.

Isabel sat down on her bed. "I'm not going," she said.

"Oh, yes, you are," returned Madame, in a small, thin voice. "You may go
in your tea gown and slippers if you prefer, but I will wait until you
dress, if you are quick about it."

"I won't," Isabel announced, flatly. "I'm sick. You know I'm all bruised
up and I can't walk."

"You can walk down-stairs and it's only a few steps farther to the
carriage. I telephoned over to ask if he would see you, and the nurse
said that he would be very glad to see you--that he had been asking all
day why you did not come. The carriage is waiting at the door, so please
hurry."

Isabel was head and shoulders taller than the determined little lady who
stood there, waiting, but there was something in her manner that
demanded immediate obedience. Sullenly, Isabel began to dress. If Aunt
Francesca went with her, it would not be necessary to say much. She
caught at the thought as though she were drowning and the proverbial
straw had floated into reach.

She took her time about dressing, but Madame said nothing. She simply
stood there, waiting, in the open door, until the last knot was tied,
the last pin adjusted, and the last stray lock brushed into place.

Isabel limped ostentatiously all the way down-stairs and had to be
assisted into the carriage. During the brief drive neither spoke. The
silence was unbroken until they reached the door of Allison's room, then
Madame said, in a low tone: "The carriage will call for you in an hour.
Remember he loves you, and be kind."

Up to that moment, Isabel had not suspected that she would be obliged to
see him alone. She was furious with Aunt Francesca for thus betraying
her, but no retreat was possible. The nurse smilingly ushered her in,
passed her almost on the threshold, and went out, quietly closing the
door.

Allison, as eager as a boy of twenty, had half risen in bed. The injured
hand was hidden by the sheet, but the other was outstretched in welcome.
"Isabel," he breathed. "My Isabel!"

Isabel did not move. "How do you do?" she said primly.

"I'm sorry I can't get you a chair, dear. Come close, won't you?"

Isabel limped painfully to the chair that was farthest from him, dragged
it over to the bed, and sat down--just out of his reach. Below, the
rumble of wheels announced that Madame had gone back home. Unless she
walked, Isabel was stranded at Kent's for a full hour.

"My note," Allison was saying. "You got it, didn't you?"

"Yes. It came while I was at luncheon to-day."

It flashed upon him for an instant that the reality was disappointing,
that this was not all as he had dreamed it would be, but pride bade him
conceal his disappointment as best he could.

"You were hurt," he said, tenderly. "I'm so sorry."

"Yes. I was hurt quite a good deal."

"But you're all right now, and I'm so glad!"

"Thank you," she answered, listlessly.

Her eyes roved about the room, observing every detail of furniture and
ornament. It was old-fashioned, and in a way queer, she thought. She was
glad that she would never have to live there.

Allison watched her eagerly. Like a wayfarer in the desert thirsting for
water, he longed for her tenderness; for one unsought kiss, even in
farewell. His pride sustained him no longer. "Dear," he pleaded, like
the veriest beggar; "won't you kiss me just once?"

Isabel hesitated. "It isn't proper," she murmured, "now that we are no
longer engaged. I'm sorry you got hurt," she added, as an afterthought.

Allison's face paled suddenly. So, she accepted her release! Then eager
justification of her made him wonder if by any chance she could have
misunderstood.

"Dearest," he said, with cold lips, "did you think for a single instant
that I wanted to release you? I did it because it was the only thing an
honourable man could do and I wouldn't let pity for me hold you to a
promise made in love. It wasn't that I didn't want you. I've wanted you
every day and every hour. Only God knows how I've wanted you and shall
want you all the rest of my life, unless--"

He paused, hoping, for the space of a heartbeat, that the dream might
come true.

But Isabel did not move from her chair. She surveyed the opposite wall
for a few moments before she spoke. "It was honourable," she said, in a
more friendly tone. "Of course it was the only thing you could do."

"Of course," he echoed, bitterly.

Isabel rose, went to the foot of the bed, and leaned upon it, facing
him. "I'm afraid I've stayed too long," she said. "I think I'd better
go. I can wait downstairs for the carriage."

Allison did not answer. His eyes burned strangely in his white face,
making her vaguely uncomfortable and afraid. She turned the diamond ring
upon her finger and slowly slipped it off.

"I suppose I must give this back," she said, reluctantly. "I mustn't
wear it now."

"Why not?" he asked huskily.

"Because it doesn't mean anything--now."

"It never did. Keep it, Isabel."

"Thank you," she said, calmly, putting it back, but on the middle
finger. "I must go now. I hope you'll get along all right."

"Wait just a minute, please." He rang a bell that was on a table within
his reach, and the nurse came in. "Please bring me my violin."

Isabel turned to the door but was held back by a peremptory command.
"Wait!"

"Here," he cried shrilly, offering Isabel the violin. "Take this, too!"

"What for?" she asked, curiously. "I can't play."

"Nevertheless, it belongs to you. Keep it, as a souvenir!"

Holding the violin awkwardly, Isabel backed out of the room, the nurse
following her and closing the door. The nurse was a young woman who had
not sacrificed her normal human sympathy to her chosen work, but had
managed, happily, to combine the two. She watched Isabel disdainfully as
she went down-stairs, very briskly for one with a sprained ankle.

"God!" said Allison, aloud. "Oh, God in Heaven!"

Then the nurse turned away in pity, for behind the closed door she heard
a grown man sobbing like a hurt child.

XVII

PENANCE

The Crosby twins had gone home very quietly, after doing all they could
to help Colonel Kent and Madame Bernard. "The Yellow Peril" chugged
along at the lowest speed with all its gaudy banners torn down. Neither
spoke until they passed the spot where the red touring car lay on its
side in the ditch, and four or five dogs, still hungry and hopeful,
wrangled over a few bare bones.

Juliet was sniffing audibly, and, as soon as she saw the wreck, burst
into tears. "Oh, Romie," she sobbed, "if he's dead, we've killed him!"

Romeo swallowed a lump in his throat, winked hard, and roughly advised
Juliet to "shut up."

When the machine was safely in the barn, and all the scattered dogs
collected and imprisoned, Romeo came in, ready to talk it over. "We've
got to do something," he said, "but I don't know what it is."

"Oh, Romie," cried Juliet with a fresh burst of tears, "do you think
they'll hang us? We're murderers!"

Romeo considered for a moment before he answered. "We aren't murderers,
because we didn't go to do it. They won't hang us--but they ought to,"
he added, remorsefully.

"What can we do?" mourned Juliet. "Oh, what can we do?"

"Well, we can pay all the bills for one thing--that's a good start. To-
morrow, I'll see about getting that car out of the ditch and taking care
of it."

"Somebody may steal it," she suggested.

"Not if we guard it. One or both of us ought to sit by it until we can
get it into the barn."

Juliet wiped her eyes. "That's right. We'll guard it all night to-night
and while we're guarding it, we'll talk it all over and decide what to
do."

The dinner of unwholesome delicacies which they had planned as the last
feature of the day's celebration was hesitatingly renounced. "We don't
deserve to have anything at all to eat," said Juliet. "What is it that
they feed prisoners on?"

"Bread and water--black bread?"

"Where could we get black bread?"

"I don't know. I never saw any."

After discussing a penitential menu for some time, they finally decided
to live upon mush and milk for the present, and, if Allison should die,
forever. "We can warm it in the winter," said Romeo, "and it won't be so
bad."

When their frugal repast was finished, they instinctively changed their
festal garments for the sober attire of every day. Romeo brought in two
lanterns and Juliet pasted red tissue paper around them, so that they
might serve as warning signals of the wreck. At sunset, they set forth,
each with a blanket and a lantern to do sentry duty by the capsized car.

"Oughtn't we to have a dog or two?" queried Romeo, as they trudged down
the road. "Watchmen always have dogs."

"We oughtn't to have anything that would make it any easier for us to
watch, and besides, the dogs weren't to blame. They don't need to sit up
with us--let 'em have their sleep."

"All right," Romeo grunted. "Shall we divide the night into watches and
one of us sit on the car while the other walks?"

"No, we'll watch together, and we won't sit on the car--we'll sit on the
cold, damp ground. If we take cold and die it will only serve us right."

"We can't take cold in June," objected Romeo, "with two blankets."

"Unless it rains."

"It won't rain tonight," he said, gloomily; "look at the stars!"

The sky was clear, and pale stars shone faintly in the afterglow. There
was not even a light breeze--the world was as still and calm as though
pain and death were unknown.

When they reached the scene of the accident, Romeo set the two red
lanterns at the point where the back of the car touched the road. They
spread one blanket on the grass at the other side of the road and sat
down to begin their long vigil. Romeo planned to go home to breakfast at
sunrise and bring Juliet some of the mush and milk left from supper.
Then, while she continued to watch the machine, he would go into town
and make arrangements for its removal.

"Is there room in our barn for both cars?" she asked.

"No. Ours will have to come out."

Juliet shuddered. "I never want to see it again."

"Neither do I."

"Can we sell it?"

"We ought not to sell it unless we gave him the money. We shouldn't have
it ourselves."

"Then," suggested Juliet, "why don't we give it away and give him just
as much as it cost, including our suits and the dogs' collars and
everything?"

"We have no right to give away a man-killer. 'The Yellow Peril' is
cursed."

"Let's sacrifice it," she cried. "Let's make a funeral pyre in the yard
and burn it, and our suits and the dogs' collars and everything. Let's
burn everything we've got that we care for!"

"All right," agreed Romeo, uplifted by the zeal of the true martyr.
"And," he added, regretfully, "I'll shoot all the dogs and bury 'em in
one long trench. I don't want to see anything again that was in it."

"I don't either," returned Juliet. She wondered whether she should
permit the wholesale execution of the herd, since it was a thing she had
secretly desired for a long time. "You mustn't shoot Minerva and the
puppies," she continued, as her strict sense of justice asserted itself,
"because she wasn't in it. She was at home taking care of her children
and they'd die if she should be shot now."

So it was settled that Minerva, who had taken no part in the fatal
celebration, should be spared, with her innocent babes.

"And in a few years more," said Romeo, hopefully, "we'll have lots more
dogs, though probably not as many as we've got now."

Juliet sighed heavily but was in honour bound to make no objections, for
long ago, when they arbitrated the dog question, it was written in the
covenant that no dogs should be imported or none killed, except by
mutual consent. And Minerva had five puppies, and if each of the five
should follow the maternal example, and if each of those should do
likewise--Juliet fairly lost her head in a maze of mental arithmetic.

"We ought to go into deep mourning," Romeo was saying.

"I've been thinking of that. We should repent in sackcloth and ashes,
only I don't know what sackcloth is."

"I guess it's that rough brown stuff they make potato bags of."

"Burlap?"

"Yes. But we haven't many ashes at this time of year and we'll have
still less if we live on mush and milk."

"Maybe we could get ashes somewhere," she said, thoughtfully.

"We'd have to, because it would take us over a year to get enough to
repent in."

"There'll be ashes left from the automobile and the suits, and if you
can get enough potato bags, I'll fix 'em so we can wear 'em at the
sacrifice and afterwards we can buy deep mourning."

"All right, but you mustn't make pretty suits."

"I couldn't, out of potato bags. They'll have to be plain--very plain."

"The first thing is to get this car into our barn, and write and tell
Colonel Kent where it is. Then we'll get our black clothes, and then
we'll shoot the dogs and bury 'em, and then we'll have the sacrifice,
and then--"

"And then," repeated Juliet.

"Then we'll have to go and tell 'em all what we've done, and offer to
pay all the bills, and give 'em the price of the car besides for
damages."

"Oh, Romie," cried Juliet, with a shudder, "we don't have to go and tell
'em, do we? We don't have to take strangers into our consciences, do
we?"

"Certainly," replied Romeo, sternly. "Just because we don't want to do
it is why we've got to. We've got to do hard things when we make a
sacrifice. Lots of people think they're charitable if they give away
their old clothes and things they don't want. It isn't charity to give
away things you want to get rid of and it isn't a sacrifice to do things
you don't mind doing. The harder it is and the more we don't want to do
it, the better sacrifice."

His logic was convincing, but Juliet drooped visibly. The bent little
figure on the blanket was pathetic, but the twins were not given to
self-pity. As time went on, the conversation lagged. They had both had a
hard day, from more than one standpoint, and it was not surprising that
by midnight, the self-appointed sentries were sound asleep upon one
blanket, with Romeo's coat for a pillow and the other blanket tucked
around them.

The red lanterns burned faithfully until almost dawn, then smoked and
went out, leaving an unpleasant odour that lasted until sunrise. The
rumble of a distant cart woke them, and they sat up, shamefacedly
rubbing their eyes.

"Oh," cried Juliet, conscience-stricken, "we went to sleep! We went to
sleep on duty! How could we?"

"Dunno," returned Romeo, with a frank yawn. "Guess we were tired.
Anyhow, the machine is all right."

When the milkman came in sight, they hailed him and purchased a quart of
milk. He was scarcely surprised to see them, for the Crosbys were widely
known to be eccentric, and presently he drove on. His query about the
wrecked car had passed unnoticed.

"If you'll stay here, Jule," said Romeo, wiping his mouth, "I'll go and
get a team and some rope and we'll get the car in."

"Can't I go too?"

"No, you stay here. It's bad enough to sleep at your post without
deserting it."

"You slept, too," retorted Juliet, quickly on the defensive, "and I'm a
girl."

"Huh!" he sneered. The claim of feminine privilege invariably disgusted
him beyond words.

"Suppose people come by--" Juliet faltered; "and--ask--questions."

"Answer 'em," advised Romeo, briefly. "Tell 'em we've killed a man and
are going to suffer for it. We deserve to have everybody know it."

But, fortunately for Juliet's quicker sensibilities, no one passed by in
the hour Romeo was gone. He came from the nearest farm with an adequate
number of assistants and such primitive machinery as was at hand. The
car was not badly damaged and was finally towed into the Crosbys' barn.
Then they went into the house and composed a letter to Colonel Kent, but
put off copying and sending it until they should be able to get black
bordered stationery.

Two weeks later, clad in deepest mourning, the twins trudged into town.
At Colonel Kent's there was no one in authority to receive them and
their errand was of too much importance to be communicated to either
physician or nurse. Their own unopened letter lay on the library table,
with many others.

Subdued and chastened in demeanour, they went to Madame Bernard's and
waited in funereal silence until Madame came down.

"How do you--" she began, then stopped. "Why, what is the matter?"

"We ran over him," explained Romeo, suggestively inclining his head in
the general direction of Kent's. "Don't you remember?"

"And if he dies, we've killed him," put in Juliet, sadly.

"We'll be murderers if he dies," Romeo continued, "and we ought to be
hung."

In spite of her own depression and deep anxiety, Madame saw how keenly
the tragedy had affected the twins. "Why, my dears!" she cried. "Do you
think for a minute that anybody in the world blames you?"

"We ought to be blamed," Romeo returned, "because we did it."

"But not on purpose--you couldn't help it."

"We could have helped it," said Juliet, "by not celebrating. We had no
business to buy an automobile, or, even if we had, we shouldn't have
gone out in it until we learned to run it."

"That's like staying away from the water until you have learned to
swim," answered Madame, comfortingly, "and Allison isn't going to die."

"Really? Do you mean it? Are you sure? How do you know?" The words came
all at once, in a jumble of eager questions.

"Because he isn't. The worst that could possibly happen to him would be
the loss of his left hand, and his father is looking all over the
country for some surgeon who can save it."

"I'd rather die than to have my hand cut off," said Juliet, in a small,
thin voice.

"So would I," added Romeo.

"We're all hoping for the best," Madame went on, "and you must hope,
too. Nobody has thought of blaming you, so you mustn't feel so badly
about it. Even Allison himself wouldn't want you to feel badly."

"But we do," Romeo answered, "in spite of all the sacrifices and
everything."

"Sacrifices," repeated Madame, wonderingly, "why, what do you mean?"

"We did sentry duty all night by his car," Romeo explained, "and we're
taking care of it in our barn."

"And we've lived on mush and milk ever since," Juliet added.

"I shot all the dogs but the one with the puppies," said Romeo.

"She wasn't in it, you know," Juliet continued. "I helped dig the trench
and we buried the whole nineteen end to end by the fence, with their new
collars on."

"Then we burned the automobile," resumed Romeo. "We soaked it in
kerosene, and put our suits into the back seat--our caps and goggles and
everything. We took out all the pieces of iron and steel and gave 'em to
the junk man, and then we repented in sackcloth and ashes."

"How so?" queried Madame, with a faint glimmer of amusement in her sad
eyes.

"Juliet made suits out of potato sacks--very plain suits--and we put 'em
on to repent in."

"We went and stood in the ashes," put in Juliet, "while they were so hot
that they hurt our feet, and Romie raised his right hand and said 'I
repent' and then I did the same."

"And after the ashes got cold, we sat down in 'em and rubbed 'em into
the sackcloth and our hair and all over our faces and hands."

"All the time saying 'I repent! I repent!'" continued Juliet, soberly.

"And then we went into mourning," concluded Romeo.

Madame's heart throbbed with tender pity for the stricken twins, but she
wisely said nothing.

"Can you think of anything more we could do, or any more sacrifices we
could make?" inquired Juliet, ready to atone in full measure.

"Indeed I can't," Madame replied, truthfully. "I think you've done
everything that could be expected of you."

"We wrote to the Colonel," said Romeo, "but he hasn't got it yet. We saw
it on the library table. We want to pay all the bills."

"And give Allison as much money as we spent on the automobile and for
the suits and everything, and pay for fixing up his car," interrupted
Juliet.

"We want to do everything," Romeo said, with marked emphasis.

"Everything," echoed Juliet.

"That's very nice of you," answered Madame, kindly, "and we all
appreciate it."

The stem young faces of the twins relaxed ever so little. It was a great
relief to discover that they were not objects of scorn and loathing, for
they had brooded over the accident until they had become morbid.

"Did you say that you had been living upon mush and milk ever since?"
asked Madame.

"Ever since," they answered, together.

"I'm sure that's long enough," she said. "I wouldn't do it any longer.
Won't you stay to dinner with us?"

With one accord the twins rose, impelled by a single impulse toward
departure.

"We couldn't," said Romeo.

"We mustn't," explained Juliet. Then, with belated courtesy, she added:
"Thank you, just the same."

They made their adieux awkwardly and went home, greatly eased in mind.
As they trudged along the dusty road, they occasionally sighed in
relief, but said little until they reached their ancestral abode,
dogless now save for the pups gambolling about the doorstep and Minerva
watching them with maternal pride.

"She said we'd lived on mush and milk long enough," said Romeo,
pensively.

"We might fry the mush," Juliet suggested.

"And have butter and maple syrup on it?"

"Maybe."

"And drink the milk, and have bread, too?"

"I guess so."

"And jam?"

"Not while we're in mourning," said Juliet, firmly. "We can have syrup
on our bread."

"That's just as good."

"If you think so, you ought not to have it."

"We've got to feed ourselves, or we'll die," he objected vigorously,
"and if we're dead, we won't be any good to him or to anybody else, and
we can't ever repent any more."

"I'm not so sure about that." said Juliet, with sinister emphasis.

"Nothing will happen to us that we don't deserve," Romeo assured her,
"so come on and let's have jam. If it makes us sick, it's wrong, and if
it doesn't, it's all right."

The following day, they voluntarily returned to their mush and milk, for
they had eaten too much jam, and, having been very ill in the night,
considered it sufficient evidence that their penance was not yet over.

XVIII

"LESS THAN THE DUST"

The heat of August shimmered over the land, and still, to every inquiry
at the door or telephone, the quiet young woman in blue and white said:
"No change." Allison was listless and apathetic, yet comparatively free
from pain.

Life, for him, had ebbed back to the point where the tide must either
cease or turn. He knew neither hunger nor thirst nor weariness; only the
great pause of soul and body, the sense of the ultimate goal.

One by one, he meditated upon the things he used to care for. Isabel
came first, but her youth and beauty had ceased to trouble or to beckon.
His father had gone on ahead. The delusion still persisted, but he spoke
of it no more. Even the violin did not matter now. He remembered the
endless hours he had spent at work, almost every day of his life for
years, and to what end? In an instant, it had been rendered empty,
purposeless, and vain--like life itself.

Occasionally a new man came to look at his hand; not from the city now,
but from towns farther inland. The examinations were painful, of course,
but he made no objections. After the man had gone, he could count the
slow, distinct pulsations that marked the ebbing of the pain, but never
troubled himself to ask either the doctor or the nurse what the new man
had said about it. He no longer cared.

Aunt Francesca had not come--nor Rose. Perhaps they were dead, also. He
asked the nurse one sultry afternoon if they were dead.

"No," she assured him; "nobody is dead."

He wondered, fretfully, why she should take the trouble to lie to him so
persistently upon this one point. Then a cunning scheme came into his
mind. It presented itself mechanically to him as a trap for the nurse.
If they were dead, she could not produce them instantly alive, as a
conjurer takes animals from an apparently empty box. If he demanded that
she should bring them to him, or even one, it would prove his point and
let her see that he knew how she was trying to deceive him.

"Have they gone away?" he inquired.

"No, they're still there."

"Then," said Allison, with the air of one scoring a fine point, "will
you ask-well--ask Miss Bernard to come over and see me?"

Remembering the other woman who had come in response to his request, and
the disastrous effect the visit had had upon her patient she hesitated.
"I'm afraid you're not strong enough," she said kindly. "Can't you wait
a little longer?"

"There," he cried. "I knew they were dead!"

As she happened to be both wise and kind, the young woman hesitated no
longer. "If I brought you a note from her you would believe me, wouldn't
you?"

"No," he replied, stubbornly.

"Isn't there any way you would know, without seeing her?"

He considered for a few moments. "I'd know if I heard her play," he said
at length. "There's no one who could play just the way she does."

"Suppose I ask her to come over sometimes and play the piano downstairs
for a few minutes at a time, very softly. Would you like that?"

"Yes--that is, I don't mind." He was sure, now, that his trap was in
working order, for no one could deceive him at the piano--he would
recognise Rose at the first chord.

"Excuse me just a minute, please." She returned presently with the news
that Rose would come as soon as she could. "Can't you go to sleep now?"
she suggested.

Allison smiled ironically. How transparent she was!

She wanted him to go to sleep and when he awoke, she would tell him that
Rose had been there, and had played, and had just gone.

"No," he answered, "I don't want to go to sleep. I want to hear Rose
play."

So he waited, persistently wide awake. Sharpened by illness and pain,
his hearing was phenomenally acute; so much so that even a whisper in
the next room was distinctly audible. He heard the distant rumble of
wheels, approaching steadily, and wondered why the house did not tremble
when the carriage stopped. He heard the lower door open softly, then
close, a quick, light step in the living room, the old-fashioned piano
stool whirling on its rusty axis, then a few slow, deep chords prefacing
a familiar bit of Chopin.

He turned to the nurse, who sat in her low rocking-chair at the window.
"I beg your pardon. I thought you were not telling me the truth."

The young woman only smiled in answer. "Listen!"

From downstairs the music came softly. Rose was playing with the
exquisite taste and feeling that characterised everything she did. She
purposely avoided the extremes of despair and joy, keeping to the safe
middle-ground. Living waters murmured through the melody, the sea surged
and crooned, flying clouds went through blue, sunny spaces, and birds
sang, ever with an unfailing uplift, as of many wings.

Allison's calmness insensibly changed, not in degree, but in quality, as
the piano magically brought before him green distances lying fair
beneath the warm sun, clover-scented meadows and blossoming boughs.
"Life," he said to himself; "life more abundant."

She drifted from one thing to another, playing snatches of old songs,
woven together by modulations of her own making. At last she paused to
think of something else, but her fingers remembered, and began, almost
of their own accord:

[Illustration: musical notation.]

Allison stirred restlessly, as he recalled how he had heard it before.
He saw the drifted petals of fallen roses, the moon-shadow on the dial,
hours wrong, the spangled cobwebs in the grass and the other spangles,
changed to faint iridescence in the enchanted light as Isabel came
toward him and into his open arms. Could marble respond to a lover's
passion, could dead lips answer with love for love, then Isabel might
have yielded to him at least a tolerant tenderness. He saw her now,
alien and apart, like some pale star that shone upon a barren waste, but
never for him.

Another phrase, full of love and longing, floated up the stairway and
entered his room, a guest unbidden.

[Illustration: musical notation.]

He turned to the nurse. "Ask Miss Bernard to come up for a few minutes,
will you?"

"Do you think it's wise?" she temporised.

"Please ask her to come up," he said, imperatively. "Must I call her
myself?"

So Rose came up, after receiving the customary caution not to stay too
long and avoid everything that might be unpleasant or exciting.

She stood for a moment in the doorway, hesitating. Her face was almost
as white as her linen gown, but her eyes were shining with strange
fires.

"White Rose," he said, wearily, "I have been through hell."

"I know," she answered, softly, drawing up a chair beside him. "Aunt
Francesca and I have wished that we might divide it with you and help
you bear it."

He stretched a trembling hand toward her and she took it in both her
own. They were soft and cool, and soothing.

"Thank you for wanting to share it," he said. "Thank you for coming, for
playing--for everything."

"Either of us would have come whenever you wanted us, night or day."

"Suppose it was night, and I'd wanted you to come and play to me. Would
you have come?"

"Why, yes. Of course I would!"

"I didn't know," he stammered, "that there was so much kindness in the
world. I have been very lonely since--"

Her eyes filled and she held his hand more closely. "You won't be lonely
any more. I'll come whenever you want me, night or day, to play, to
read--or anything. Only speak, and I'll come."

"How good you are!" he murmured, gratefully. "No, please don't let go of
my hand." In some inexplicable fashion strength seemed to flow to him
from her.

"I think you'll be glad to know," she said, "how sympathetic everybody
has been. Strangers stop us on the street to ask for you, and people
telephone every day. Down in the library, there's a pile of letters that
would take days to read, and many of them have foreign stamps. It makes
one feel warm around the heart, for it brings the ideal of human
brotherhood so near."

He sighed and his face looked haggard. The brotherhood of man was among
the things that did not concern him now. The weariness of the ages was
in every line of his body.

"I have been thinking," he went on, after a little, "what a difference
one little hour can make, a minute, even. Once I had everything--youth,
health, strength, a happy home, love, a dear father, and every promise
of success in my chosen career. Now I'm old and broken; health,
strength, and love have been taken away in an instant, my father is
gone, and my career is only an empty memory. I have no violin, and, if I
had, what use would it be to me without--why Rose, I haven't even
fingers to make the notes nor hands to hold it."

Rose could bear no more. She sprang to her feet with arms outstretched,
all her love and longing swelling into infinite appeal. "Oh Boy!" she
cried, "take mine! Take my hands, for always!"

For a tense instant they faced each other. Her breast rose and fell with
every quick breath; her eyes met his, then faltered, and the crimson of
shame mantled her white face.

"Oh," she breathed, painfully, and turned away from him. When she was
half way to the door, he called to her. "Rose! Dear Rose!"

She hesitated, her hand upon the knob. "Close the door and come back,"
he pleaded. "Please--oh, please!"

Trembling from head to foot, she obeyed him, but her face was pitiful.
She could not force herself to look at him. "Forgive," she murmured,
"and forget."

The hand he took in his was cold, but her nearness gave him comfort, as
never before. His heart was unspeakably tender toward her.

"Rose," he went on, softly, "I've been too near the other world not to
have the truth now. Tell me what you mean! Make me understand!"

She did not answer, nor even lift her eyes. She breathed hard, as though
she were in pain.

"Rose," he said again, tightening his clasp upon the hand she tried to
draw away, "did you mean that you would be my--"

"In name," she interrupted, throwing up her head proudly. "Just to help
you--that was all."

He drew her hand to his hot lips and kissed it twice. "Oh, how divinely
kind you are," he whispered, "even to think of stooping to such as I!"

"Have pity," she said brokenly, "and let me go."

"Pity?" he repeated. "In all the world there is none like yours. To
think of your being willing to sacrifice yourself, through pity of me!"

The blood came back into her heart by leaps and bounds. She had not
utterly betrayed herself, then, since he translated it thus.

"Listen," he was saying. "I cared--terribly, but it's gone, and my heart
is empty. It's like an open grave, waiting for something that does not
come. Did you ever care?"

"Yes," she answered, with eyes downcast.

"Did you care for someone who did not care for you?"

"Yes," she replied, again.

"And he never knew?"

"No." The word was almost a whisper.

"He must have been a brute, not to have cared. Was it long ago?"

"Not very."

"Have I ever met him?"

The suggestion of an ironical smile hovered for a moment around her pale
lips, then vanished. "No."

"I have no right to--to ask his name."

"No. What difference does a name make?"

"None. Could you never bring yourself to care for anyone else?"

"No," she breathed. "Oh, no!"

"And yet, with your heart as empty as mine you still have pity enough
to--"

"To serve you," she answered. Her eyes met his clearly now. "To help
you--as your best friend might."

"Rose, dear Rose! You give me new courage, but how can I let you
sacrifice yourself for me?" "Believe me," she said diffidently, "there
is no question of sacrifice. Have you never thought of what you might
do, that would be even better than the career you had planned?"

"Why, no. What could I do, without--"

"Write," she said, with her eyes shining. "Let others play what you
write. Immortality comes by way of the printed page."

"I couldn't," he returned, doubtfully.

"I never composed anything except two or three little things that I
never dared to play, even for encores."

"Never say you can't. Say 'I must,' and 'I will.'"

"You're saying them for me. You almost make me believe in myself."

"That's the very best of beginnings, isn't it?"

She was quite calm now, outwardly, and she drew her hand away. Allison
remembered the long, happy hours they had spent together before Isabel
came into his life. Now that she was gone, the old comradeship had
returned, the sweeter because of long absence. Rose had never fretted
nor annoyed him; she seemed always to understand.

"You don't know how glad I'd be," he sighed, "to feel that I wasn't
quite out of it--that there was something in life for me still. I didn't
want to be a bit of driftwood on the current of things."

"You're not going to be--I won't let you. Haven't you learned that
sometimes we have to wait; that we can't always be going on? Just moor
your soul at the landing place, and when the hour comes, you'll swing
out into the current again. Much of the driftwood is only craft that
broke away from the landing."

He smiled, for her fancy pleased him. An abiding sense of companionship
crept into his loneliness; his isolation seemed to be shared. "And
you'll stay at the landing with me," he whispered, "until the time comes
to set sail again?"

"Yes."

"And--after the worst that can come--is over, we'll make it right with
the world and go abroad together?"

"Yes." Her voice was very low now.

"And we'll be the best of friends, for always?"

"Yes--the best of friends in all the world."

"And you'll promise me that, if you're ever sorry, you'll come straight
and tell me--that you'll ask me to set you free?"

"I promise."

"Then everything is all right between you and me?"

"Yes, but I'm ashamed--bitterly ashamed."

"You mustn't be, for I'm very glad. We'll try to forget the wreckage
together. I couldn't have asked, unless I had known about--the other
man, and you wouldn't have told me, I know. It wouldn't have been like
you to tell me."

There was a knock, the door opened, and the nurse came in, watch in
hand. "I'm sorry, Miss Bernard, but you can come to-morrow if he's well
enough."

"I'll be well enough," said Allison, smiling.

"Of course," Rose assured him, shaking hands in friendly fashion. "Don't
forget that it's a secret."

"I won't. Good-bye, Rose."

When she had gone, the nurse studied him furtively, from across the
room. He had changed in some subtle way--he seemed stronger than before.
Unless it was excitement, to be followed by a reaction, Miss Bernard had
done him good. The night would prove it definitely, one way or the
other.

Allison slept soundly until daybreak, for the first time--not stupor,
but natural sleep. The nurse began to wonder if it was possible that a
hand so badly crushed and broken could be healed. Hitherto her service
had been mechanically kind; she had taken no interest because she saw no
hope. How wonderful it would be if that long procession of learned
counsellors should be mistaken after all!

Rose walked home, disdaining the waiting carriage. She had forgotten her
hat and the sunset lent radiance to a face that needed no more. By rare
tact and kindness, Allison had removed the sting from her shame and the
burden she had borne so long was lifted from her heavy heart.

She was happier now than she had ever been before in her life, but she
must hide her joy from the others as she had previously hidden her pain
--or tried to. She knew that Isabel would not see, but Aunt Francesca's
eyes were keen and she could not tell even her just now.

How strange it would be to wake in the night, without that dull, dead
pain! How strange it was to feel herself needed, and oh, the joy of
serving him!

She thrilled with the ecstasy of sacrifice; with that maternal
compassion which is a vital element in woman's love for man. Sublimated
beyond passion and self-seeking, and asking only the right to give, she
poured out the treasure of her soul at his feet, though her pride
demanded that he must never know.

When she went into the house, light seemed to enter the shaded room with
her. No one was there, but the open piano waited, ready to receive a
confidence. With a laugh that was half a sob of joy, she sat down, her
fingers readily finding the one thing that suited her mood.

The wild, half-savage music rang through the house in full, deep chords,
but only Rose knew the words, which, in her mind, fitted themselves to
the melody as though she dared to sing them:

  "Less than the dust, beneath thy Chariot wheel,
   Less than the rust, that never stained thy Sword,
   Less than the trust thou hast in me, O Lord,
      Even less then these.

  "Less than the weed that grows beside thy door,
   Less than the speed of hours spent far from thee,
   Less than the need thou hast in life of me;
        Even less am I."

Upstairs, Isabel yawned lazily, and wondered why Rose should play so
loud, but Aunt Francesca smiled to herself, for she knew that Allison
was better and that Rose was glad.

XIX

OVER THE BAR

As a flower may bloom in a night, joy returned to Madame Bernard's house
after long absence. There was no outward sign, for Rose was still quiet
and self-controlled, but her face was a shade less pale and there was a
tremulous music in her voice.

Isabel had ceased to limp, but still dwelt upon the shock and its
lingering effects. She amused herself in her own way, reading paper-
covered novels, feasting upon chocolates, teasing Mr. Boffin, and
playing solitaire. Madame remarked to Rose that Isabel seemed to have a
cosmic sense of time.

The guest never came down-stairs till luncheon was announced, and did
not trouble herself to make an elaborate, or even appropriate toilet.
Madame began to wonder how long Isabel intended to remain and to see the
wisdom of the modern fashion of appointing the hour of departure in the
invitation.

Yet, as she said to herself rather grimly, she would have invited Isabel
to remain through the Summer, and perhaps, in the early Autumn she might
return to town of her own accord. Moreover, there appeared to be no
graceful way of requesting an invited guest to leave.

Though Madame was annoyed by the mere fact of Isabel's presence, she had
ceased to distress Rose, who dwelt now in a world apart from the others.
She spent her afternoons at the other house, playing softly downstairs,
reading to Allison, or talking to him of the brilliant future that she
insisted was to be his.

Neither of them spoke of the hour in which Rose had unwittingly revealed
herself, nor did they seem to avoid the subject. Allison had taken her
for granted, on a high plane of pure friendliness, and not for an
instant did he translate her overpowering impulse as anything but
womanly pity.

She practised for an hour or two every morning that she might play
better in the afternoon, she ransacked the library for interesting and
cheerful things to read to him, and she even found a game or two that he
seemed to enjoy. From Madame Francesca's spotless kitchen came many a
dainty dish to tempt his capricious appetite, and all the flowers from
both gardens, daily, made a bower of his room.

Constantly, too, Rose brought the message of hopefulness and good cheer.
From her abounding life and superb vitality he drew unconscious
strength; the hidden forces that defy analysis once more exerted
themselves in his behalf. So far as man is of the earth, earthy, by the
earth and its fruits may he be healed, but the heavenly part of him may
be ministered unto only by the angels of God.

His old fear of the darkness had gone and the night light had been taken
out into the hall. In the faint glow, he could see the objects in his
room distinctly, during the brief intervals of wakefulness. A flower
dropped from its vase, a book lying half open, a crumpled handkerchief
upon his chiffonier, the pervading scent of attar of roses and dried
petals--all these brought him a strange sense of nearness to Rose, as a
perfume may be distilled from a memory.

Day by day, Isabel became more remote. He thought of her without emotion
when he thought of her at all, for only women may know the agony of love
enduring after the foundation upon which it was built has been swept
away.

The strange men from distant places came less frequently. Days would
pass, and bring no word. The country doctor who had first been called
stopped occasionally when time permitted, and his faithful old horse
needed a little rest, but he only shook his head. He admitted to the
nurse that he was greatly surprised because the inevitable operation had
not yet become imperative.

Colonel Kent seemed to have been lost for almost a week. During that
time no word had been received from him and Madame's daily bulletin: "No
change for the worse," had been returned, marked "not found." She was
vaguely troubled and uneasy, fearing that something might have happened
to him, but forebore to speak of her fears.

One morning, while Allison was still asleep, the nurse wakened him
gently. "A new man, Mr. Allison; can you see him now?"

"I don't care," he replied. "Bring him in."

The newcomer was a young man--one would have guessed that the ink was
scarcely dry on his diploma. He had a determined mouth, a square chin,
kind eyes, and the buoyant youthful courage that, by itself, carries one
far upon any chosen path.

He smiled at Allison and Allison smiled back at him, in friendly
fashion. "Now," said the young man, "let's see."

His big fingers were astonishingly gentle, they worked with marvellous
dexterity, and, for the first time, the dreaded examination was almost
painless. He asked innumerable questions both of Allison and the nurse,
and wanted to know who had been there previously.

The nurse had kept no record, but she knew some of the men, and
mentioned their names--names to conjure with in the professional world.
Even the two great Germans had said it was of no use.

The young man wrinkled his brows in deep thought. "What have you been
using?" he inquired, of the nurse.

"Everything. Come here."

She led him into the next room, where a formidable array of bottles and
boxes almost covered a large table. He looked them all over, carefully,
scrutinising the names on the druggist's labels, sniffing here and
there, occasionally holding some one bottle to the light, and finally,
out of sheer youthful curiosity, counting them.

Then he laughed--a cheery, hearty laugh that woke long-sleeping echoes
in the old house and made Allison smile, in the next room. "It seems,"
he commented, "that a doctor has to leave a prescription as other men
leave cards--just as a polite reminder of the call."

"What shall I do with them?"

"Dump 'em all out--I don't care. Or, wait a minute; there's no rush."

He went back to Allison. "I see you've got quite a drug store here. Are
you particularly attached to any special concoction?"

"Indeed I'm not. Most of 'em have hurt--sinfully."

"I don't know that anything has to be painful or disagreeable in order
to be healing," remarked the young man, thoughtfully. "Would you like to
throw 'em all out of the window?"

"I certainly would."

"All right--that'll be good business." He swung Allison's bed around so
that his right arm rested easily on the window sill, requested the nurse
to wheel the drug store within easy reach, and rapidly uncorked bottle
after bottle with his own hands.

"Now then, get busy."

He sat by, smiling, while Allison poured the varying contents of the
drug store on the ground below and listened for the sound of breaking
glass when the bottle swiftly followed the last gurgling drop. When all
had been disposed of, the nurse took out the table, and the young man
smiled expansively at Allison.

"Feel better?"

"I--think so."

"Good. Now, look here. How much does your hand mean to you?"

"How much does it mean?" repeated Allison, pitifully. "It means life,
career--everything."

"Enough to make a fight for it then, I take it."

Dull colour surged by waves into Allison's white face. "What do you
mean?" he asked, in a broken voice. "Tell me what you mean!"

But the young man was removing his coat. "Hot day," he was saying, "and
the young lady won't mind my negligee as long as the braces don't show.
Strange--how women hate nice new braces. Say," he said to the nurse as
she returned, "get somebody to go up to the station and bring down my
trunk, will you?"

"Trunk?" echoed Allison.

"Sure," smiled the young man. "My instructions were to stay if I saw any
hope, so I brought along my trunk. I'm always looking for a chance to
hope, and I've discovered that it's one of the very best ways to find
it."

The nurse had hastened away upon her errand. The new element in the
atmosphere of the sick room had subtly affected her, also.

"Don't fence," Allison was saying, huskily. "I've asked so much that
I've quit asking."

The young man nodded complete understanding. "I know. The moss-backs sit
around and look wise, and expect to work miracles on a patient who
doesn't know what they're doing and finally gets the impression that he
isn't considered fit to know. Far be it from me to disparage the
pioneers of our noble profession, but I'm modest enough to admit that I
need help, and the best help, every time, comes from the patient
himself."

He drew up his chair beside the bed and sat down. Allison's eager eyes
did not swerve from his face.

"Mind you," he went on, "I don't promise anything--I can't,
conscientiously. In getting a carriage out of the mud, more depends upon
the horse than on the driver. Nature will have to do the work--I can't.
All I can do is to guide her gently. If she's pushed, she gets balky.
Maybe there's something ahead of her that I don't see, and there's no
use spurring her ahead when she's got to stop and get her breath before
she can go up hill.

"That hand can't heal itself without good blood to draw upon, and good
material to make bone and nerve of, so we'll begin to stoke up,
gradually, and meanwhile, I'll camp right here and see what's doing. And
if you can bring yourself to sort of--well, sing at your work, you know,
it's going to make the job a lot easier."

Allison drew a long breath of relief. "You give me hope," he said.

"Sure," returned the young man, with an infectious laugh. "A young
surgeon never has much else when he starts, nor for some time to come.
Want to sit up?"

"Why," Allison breathed, in astonishment, "I can't."

"Who said so?"

"Everybody. They all said I must lie perfectly still."

"Of course," mused the young man, aloud, "blood may move around all
right of itself, and then again, it may not. Wouldn't do any harm to
stir it up a bit and remind the red corpuscles not to loaf on the job."

The nurse came back, to say that the trunk would be up immediately.

"Good. Can I have a bunk in the next room?" Without waiting for her
answer, he requested raw eggs and milk, beaten up with a little cream
and sherry.

While Allison was drinking it, he moved a big easy chair up near the
window, opened every shutter wide, and let the hot sun stream into the
room. He expeditiously made a sling for the injured hand, slipped it
painlessly into place, put a strong arm under Allison's shoulders, and
lifted him to a sitting posture on the edge of the bed. "Now then,
forward, march! Just lean on me."

Muscles long unused trembled under the strain but finally he made the
harbour of the easy chair, gasping for breath. "Good," said the young
man. "At this rate, we'll soon have clothes on us and be outdoors."

"Really?" asked Allison, scarcely daring to believe his ears.

"Sure," replied the marvellous young man, confidently. "What's the use
of keeping a whole body in the house on account of one hand? I'm going
to tell you just one thing more, then we'll quit talking shop and
proceed to politics or anything else you like.

"I knew a man once who was a trapeze performer in a circus and he was
training his son in the same lofty profession. The boy insisted that he
couldn't do it, and finally the man said to him: 'Look here, kid, if
you'll put your heart over the bar, your body will follow all right,'
and sure enough it did. Now you get your heart over the bar, and trust
your hand to follow. Get the idea?"

The sound of the piano below chimed in with the answer. A rippling,
laughing melody danced up the stairs and into the room. The young man
listened a moment, then asked, "Who?"

"A friend of mine--my very dearest friend."

"More good business. I think I'll go down and talk to her. What's her
name?"

"Rose."

"What's the rest of it? I can't start in that way, you know. Bad form."

"Bernard--Rose Bernard."

As quickly and silently as he did everything else, the young man went
down-stairs, and the piano stopped, but only for a moment, as he
requested her, with an airy wave of the hand, not to mind him. When she
finished the old song she was playing, he called her by name, introduced
himself, and invited her out into the garden, because, as he said,
"walls not only have ears, but telephones."

"Say," he began, by way of graceful preliminary, "you look to me as
though you had sense."

"Thank you," she replied, demurely.

"Sense," he resumed, "is lamentably scarce, especially the variety
misnamed common--or even horse. I'm no mental healer, nor anything of
that sort, you know, but it's reasonable to suppose that if the mind can
control the body, after a fashion, when the body is well, it's entitled
to some show when the body isn't well, don't you think so?"

Rose assented, though she did not quite grasp what he said. His all
pervading breeziness affected her much as it had Allison.

"Now," he continued, "I'm not unprofessional enough to knock anybody,
but I gather that there's been a procession of undertakers down here
making that poor chap upstairs think there's no chance. I'm not saying
that there is, but there's no reason why we shouldn't trot along until
we have to stop. It isn't necessary to amputate just yet, and until it
is necessary, there's nothing to hinder us from working like the devil
to save him from it, is there?"

"Surely not."

"All right. Are you in on it?"

"I'm 'in,'" replied Rose, slowly, "on anything and everything that human
power can do, day or night, until we come to the last ditch."

"Good for you. I'll appoint you first lieutenant. I guess that nurse is
all right, though she doesn't seem to be unduly optimistic."

"She's had nothing to make her so. Everything has been discouraging so
far."

"Plenty of discouragement in the world," he observed, "handed out free
of charge, without paying people to bring it into the house when you're
peevish."

"Very true," she answered, then her eyes filled. "Oh," she breathed,
with white lips, "if you can--if you only can--"

"We'll have a try for it," he said, then continued, kindly: "no salt
water upstairs, you know."

"I know," she sighed, wiping her eyes.

"Then 'on with the dance--let joy be unconfined.'"

Rose obediently went back to the piano. The arrival of the trunk and the
composition of a hopeful telegram to Colonel Kent occupied the
resourceful visitor for ten or fifteen minutes. Then he went back to his
patient, who had already begun to miss him.

"You forgot to tell me your name," Allison suggested.

"Sure enough. Call me Jack, or Doctor Jack, when I'm not here and have
to be called."

"But, as you said yourself a few minutes ago, I can't begin that way.
What's the rest of it?"

"If you'll listen," responded the young man, solemnly, "I will unfold
before your eyes the one blot upon the 'scutcheon of my promising
career. My full name is Jonathan Ebenezer Middlekauffer."

"What--how--I mean--excuse me," stammered Allison.

The young man laughed joyously. "You can search me," he answered, with a
shrug. "The gods must have been in a sardonic mood about the time I
arrived to gladden this sorrowful sphere. I've never used more of it
than I could help, and everybody called me 'Jem' until I went to
college, the initials making a shorter and more agreeable name. But
before I'd been there a week, I was 'Jemima' or 'Aunt Jemima' to the
whole class. So I changed it myself, though it took a thrashing to make
two or three of 'em remember that my name was Jack."

"How did you happen to come here?" queried Allison, without much
interest.

"The man who was down here on the fifth sent me. He told me about you
and suggested that my existence might be less wearing if I had something
to do. He just passed along his instructions and faded gracefully out of
sight, saying: 'You'd better go, Middlekauffer, as your business seems
to be the impossible,' so I packed up and took the first train."

"What did he mean by saying that your business was impossible?"

"Not impossible, but THE impossible. Good Heavens, man, don't things get
mixed like that! All he meant was that such small reputation as I have
been able to acquire was earned by doing jobs that the other fellows
shirked. I'm ambidextrous," he added, modestly, "and I guess that helps
some. Let's play piquet."

When Rose came up, an hour or so later, they were absorbed in their
game, and did not see her until she spoke. She was overjoyed to see
Allison sitting up, but, observing that she was not especially needed,
invented a plausible errand and said good-bye, promising to come the
next day.

"Nice girl," remarked Doctor Jack, shuffling the cards for Allison.
"Mighty nice girl."

"My future wife," answered Allison, proudly, forgetting his promise.

"More good business. You'd be a brute if you didn't save that hand for
her. She's entitled to the best that you can give her."

"And she shall have it," returned Allison.

Doctor Jack's quick ears noted a new determination in the voice, that
only a few hours before had been weak and wavering, and he nodded his
satisfaction across the card table.

That night, while Allison slept soundly, and the nurse also, having been
told that she was off duty until called, the young man recklessly burned
gas in the next room, with pencil and paper before him. First, he
carefully considered the man with whom he had to deal, then mapped out a
line of treatment, complete to the last detail.

"There," he said to himself, "by that we stand or fall."

The clocks struck three, but the young man still sat there, oblivious to
his surroundings, or to the fact that even strong and healthy people
occasionally need a little sleep. At last a smile lighted up his face.
"What fun it would be," he thought, "for him to give a special concert,
and invite every blessed moss-back who said 'impossible!' It wouldn't
please me or anything, would it, to stand at the door and see 'em come
in? Oh, no!"

There was a stir in the next room, and Allison called him, softly.

"Yes?" It was only a word, but the tone, as always, was vibrant with
good cheer.

"I just wanted to tell you," Allison said, "that my heart is over the
bar."

In the dark, the two men's hands met. "More good business," commented
Doctor Jack. "Just remember what somebody said of Columbus: 'One day,
with life and hope and heart, is time enough to find a world.' Go to
sleep now. I'll see you in the morning."

"All right," Allison returned, but he did not sleep, even after certain
low sounds usually associated with comfortable slumber came from the
doctor's room. He lay there, waiting happily, while from far, mysterious
sources, life streamed into him, as the sap rises into the trees at the
call of Spring. Across the despairing darkness, a signal had been
flashed to him, and he was answering it, in every fibre of body and
soul.

XX

RISEN FROM THE DEAD

COLONEL KENT, in a distant structure which, by courtesy, was called "the
hotel," had pushed away his breakfast untasted, save for a small portion
of the nondescript fluid the frowsy waitress called "coffee." He had
been delayed, missed his train at the junction point, and, fretting with
impatience, had been obliged to pass the night there.

He had wired to Madame Francesca the night before, but, as yet, had
received no answer. He had personally consulted every surgeon of
prominence in the surrounding country, and all who would not say flatly,
without further information than he could give them, that there was no
chance, had been asked to go and see for themselves.

One by one, their reports came back to him, unanimously hopeless.
Heartsick and discouraged, he rallied from each disappointment, only to
face defeat again. He had spent weeks in fruitless journeying, following
up every clue that presented itself, waited days at hospitals for chiefs
of staff, and made the dreary round of newspaper offices, where
knowledge of every conceivable subject is supposedly upon file for the
asking.

One enterprising editor, too modern to be swayed by ordinary human
instincts, had turned the Colonel over to the star reporter--a young man
with eyes like Allison's. By well-timed questions and sympathetic offers
of assistance, he dragged the whole story of his wanderings from the
unsuspecting old soldier.

It made a double page in the Sunday edition, including the
illustrations--a "human interest" story of unquestionable value,
introduced by a screaming headline in red: "Old Soldier on the March to
Save Son. Violinist about to Lose Hand."

When the Colonel saw it, his eyes filled so that he could not see the
words that danced through the mist, and the paper trembled from his
hands to the floor. He was too nearly heartbroken to be angry, and too
deeply hurt to take heed of the last stab.

No word reached him until late at night, when he arrived at the
metropolitan hotel that he had made his headquarters. When he
registered, two telegrams were handed to him, and he tore them open
eagerly. The first was from Madame Francesca:

"Slight change for the better. New man gives hope. Better return at
once."

The second one was wholly characteristic:

"Willing to take chance. Am camping on job. Come home." It was signed:
"J. E. Middlekauffer."

When he got to his room, the Colonel sat down to think. He knew no one
of that name--had never even heard it before. Perhaps Francesca--it
would have been like her, to work with him and say nothing until she had
something hopeful to say.

His heart warmed toward her, then he forgot her entirely in a sudden
realisation of the vast meaning of the two bits of yellow paper. Why, it
was hope; it was a fighting chance presenting itself where hitherto had
been only despair! He could scarcely believe it. He took the two
telegrams closer to the light, and read the blessed words over and over
again, then, trembling with weakness and something more, tottered back
to his chair.

Until then, he had not known how weary he was, nor how the long weeks of
anxiety and fruitless effort had racked him to the soul. As one may bear
a burden bravely, yet faint the moment it is lifted, his strength failed
him in the very hour that he had no need of it. He sat there for a long
time before he was able to shut off the light and creep into bed, with
his tear-wet cheek pillowed upon one telegram, and a wrinkled hand
closely clasping the other, as though holding fast to the message meant
the keeping of the hope it brought.

Utterly exhausted, he slept until noon. When he woke, it was with the
feeling that something vitally important had happened. He could not
remember what it was until he heard the rustling of paper and saw the
two telegrams. He read them once more, in the clear light of day,
fearing to find the message but a fantasy of the night. To his unbounded
relief, it was still there--no dream of water to the man dying of
thirst, but a living reality that sunlight did not change.

"Thank God," he cried aloud, sobbing for very joy, "Thank God!"

Meanwhile, the Resourceful One had shown the nurse how to cut a sleeve
out of one of Allison's old coats, and open the under-arm seam. Having
done this, she was requested to treat a negligee shirt in the same way.
Then the village barber was sent for, and instructed to do his utmost.

"Funny," remarked Doctor Jack, pensively, "that nobody has thought of
doing that before. If I hadn't come just as I did, you'd soon have
looked like a chimpanzee, and, eventually, you'd have been beyond the
reach of anything but a lawn-mower. They didn't even think to braid your
hair and tie it with a blue ribbon."

The nurse laughed; so did Allison, but the pensive expression of the
young man's face did not change.

"I've had occasion lately," he continued, "to observe the powerful tonic
effect of clothes. A woman patient told me once that the moral support,
afforded by a well-fitting corset was inconceivable to the mind of a
mere man. She said that a corset is to a woman what a hat is to a man--
it prepares for any emergency, enables one to meet life on equal terms,
and even to face a rebellious cook or janitor with 'that repose which
marks the caste of Vere de Vere.'"

"I've often wondered," returned Allison, "why I felt so much--well, so
much more adequate with my hat on."

"Clear case of inherited instincts. The wild dog used to make himself a
smooth bed in the rushes of long grass by turning around several times
upon the selected spot. Consequently, the modern dog has to do the same
stunt before he can go to sleep. The hat is a modification of the
helmet, which always had to be worn outside the house, in the days when
hold-ups and murders were even more frequent than now, and the desire
for a walking-stick comes from the old fashion of carrying a spear or a
sword. If a man took off his helmet, it was equivalent to saying: 'In
the presence of my friend, I am safe.' When he takes off his hat to a
lady now, he merely means: 'You're not a voter.' You'll notice that in
any gathering of men, helmets are still worn."

So he chattered, with apparent unconcern, but, none the less, he was
keenly watching his patient. With tact that would have done credit to a
diplomat, he kept the conversation in agreeable channels. By noon,
Allison had his clothes on, the coat being pinned under the left arm
with two safety pins that did not show, and was out upon an upper
veranda.

Doctor Jack encouraged him to walk whenever he felt that he could, even
though it was only to the other end of the veranda and back to his
chair. Somewhat to his astonishment, Allison began to feel better.

"I believe you're a miracle-worker," he said. "Two days ago, I was in
bed, with neither strength, ambition, nor hope. Now I've got all three."

"No miracle," replied the other modestly. "Merely sense."

That afternoon the Crosby twins telephoned to know whether they might
call, and the nurse brought the query upstairs. "If they're amusing,"
said the doctor, "let 'em come."

Allison replied that the twins had been highly amusing--until they ran
"The Yellow Peril" over his left hand. "Poor little devils," he mused;
"they've got something on their minds."

"Mighty lucky for you that it wasn't a macadamised boulevard instead of
a sandy country road," observed the doctor. "The softness underneath has
given us a doubt to work on."

"How so?"

"It's easier, to crush anything on a hard surface than it is on a
pillow, isn't it?"

"Of course--I hadn't thought of that. If there had been more sand--"

"I look to you to furnish that," returned the other with a quick twist
of meaning. "You've got plenty of sand, if you have half a chance to
show it."

"How long--when do you think you'll know?" Allison asked, half afraid of
the answer.

"If I knew, I'd be glad to tell you, but I don't. I've found out that
it's easier to say 'I don't know' straight out in plain English than it
is to side-track. It used to be bad form, professionally, to admit
ignorance, but it isn't now. People soon find it out and you might as
well tell 'em at the start. You just go on and keep the fuel bins well
supplied and the red corpuscles busy and pretty soon we'll see what's
doing."

The twins were late in coming, because they had had a long discussion as
to the propriety of wearing their sable garments. Romeo, disliking the
trouble of changing, argued that Allison ought to see that their grief
was sincere. Juliet insisted that the sight would prove depressing.

At the end of a lively hour, they compromised upon white, which was worn
by people in mourning and was not depressing. Juliet donned a muslin
gown and Romeo put on his tennis flannels, which happened to be clean.
As they took pains to walk upon the grass and avoid the dusty places,
they were comparatively fresh when they arrived, though very warm from
the long walk.

Both had inexpressibly dreaded seeing Allison, yet the reality lacked
the anticipated terror, as often happens. They liked Doctor Jack
immensely from the start and were greatly relieved to see Allison up and
outdoors, instead of lying in a darkened room.

Almost before they knew it, they were describing their sacrificial rites
and their repentance, with a wealth of detail that left nothing to be
desired. Doctor Jack was suddenly afflicted with a very bad cough, but
he kept his back to them and used his handkerchief a great deal. Even
Allison was amused by their austere young faces and the earnest devotion
with which they had performed their penance.

"We've had your car fixed," said Romeo. "It's all right now."

"We've paid the bill," added Juliet.

"We want to pay everything," Romeo continued.

"Everything," she echoed.

"I don't know that I want the car," Allison answered, kindly. "If I had
been a good driver, I could have backed into the turn before you got
there and let you whiz by. I'm sorry yours is burned. Won't you take
mine?"

"No," answered Romeo, with finality.

"We don't deserve even to ride in one," Juliet remarked. "We ought to
have to walk all the rest of our lives."

"You people make me tired," interrupted Doctor Jack. "Just because
you've been mixed up in an accident, you're about to get yourselves
locoed, as they say out West, on the subject of automobiles. By careful
cultivation, you could learn to shy at a baby carriage and throw a fit
at the sight of a wheelbarrow. The time to nip that is right at the
start."

"How would you do it?" queried Allison. His heart was heavy with dread
of all automobiles, past, present, and to come."

"Same way they break a colt. Get him used to the harness, then to
shafts, and so on. Now, I can run any car that ever was built--make it
stand on its hind wheels if I want to and roll through a crowd without
making anybody even wink faster. I think I'll go out and get that one
and take the whole bunch of you out for a cure."

Juliet was listening attentively, with her blue eyes wide open and her
scarlet lips parted. Doctor Jack was subtly conscious of a new
sensation.

"I see," she said. "Romie made me hold snakes by their tails until I
wasn't afraid of 'em, and made me kill mice and even rats. Only sissy
girls are afraid of snakes and rats. And just because we were both
afraid to go by the graveyard at night, we made ourselves do it. We can
walk through it now, even if there isn't any moon, and never dodge a
single tombstone."

"Was it hard to learn to do it?" asked the doctor. If he was amused, he
did not show it now.

"No," Juliet answered, "because just before we did it, we read about
it's being called 'God's Acre.' So I told Romie that God must be there
as much or more than He was anywhere else, so how could we be afraid?"

"After you once get it into your head that God is everywhere," added
Romeo, "you can't be afraid because there's nothing to be afraid of."

The simple, child-like faith appealed to both men strongly. Allison was
much surprised, for he had not imagined that there was a serious side to
the twins.

"Will you forgive us?" asked Juliet, humbly.

"Please," added Romeo.

"With all my heart," Allison responded, readily. "I've never thought
there was anything to forgive."

"Then our sacrifice is over," cried Juliet, joyously.

"Yes," her brother agreed, with a wistful expression on his face, "and
to-night we can have something to eat."

The twins never lingered long after the object of a visit was
accomplished, so they rose almost immediately to take their departure.
"Cards, Romie," Juliet suggested, in an audible whisper.

Romeo took a black bordered envelope from an inner pocket and gravely
extended a card to each. Then they bowed themselves out, resisting with
difficulty the temptation to slide down the banister instead of going
downstairs two steps at a time.

Doctor Jack's mobile face had assumed an entirely new expression. He put
away the card inscribed The Crosby Twins as though it were an article of
great value, then leaned out over the veranda railing to catch a glimpse
of the two flying figures in white.

"Upon my word!" he exclaimed.

Allison laughed aloud. "You're not disappointed in the twins, are you?"

"If I were going to be run over," remarked the Doctor, ignoring the
question, "I believe I'd choose them to do it. Think of the little
pagans burning their car and repenting in sackcloth and ashes, not to
mention shooting the dogs and living upon penitential fare."

"Poor kids," Allison said, with a sigh.

"Tell me about 'em," pleaded Doctor Jack "Tell me everything you know
about 'em, especially Juliet."

"I don't know much," replied the other, "for I came back here only a few
months ago, and when I went abroad, they were merely enfants terribles
imperfectly controlled by a pair of doting parents."

However, he gladly told what he knew of the varied exploits of the
twins, and his eager listener absorbed every word. At length when
Allison could think of no more, and the afternoon shadows grew long,
they went in.

Consigning his patient to the care of the nurse, the Doctor went down
into the garden, to walk back and forth upon the long paths, gaze, open-
mouthed, down the road, and moon, like the veriest schoolboy, over
Juliet's blue eyes.

Her pagan simplicity, her frank boyishness, and her absolute
unconsciousness of self, appealed to him irresistibly. "The dear kid,"
he said to himself, fondly; "the blessed little kid! Wonder how old she
is!"

Then he remembered that Allison had told him the twins were almost
twenty-one, but Juliet seemed absurdly young for her years. "The world
will take her," he sighed to himself, "and change her in a little while
so even her own brother won't know her. She'll lace, and wear high heels
and follow the latest fashion whether it suits her or not, and touch up
her pretty cheeks with rouge, twist her hair into impossible coiffures,
and learn all the wicked ways of the world."

The wavy masses of tawny hair, the innocent blue eyes, as wide and
appealing as a child's, the clear, rosy skin, and the parted scarlet
lips--all these would soon be spoiled by the thousand deceits of
fashion.

"And I can't help it," he thought, sadly. Then his face brightened. "By
George," he said aloud, "I'm only twenty-eight--wonder if the kid could
learn to stand me around the house." He laughed, from sheer joy. "I'll
have a try for her," he continued to himself. "Me for Juliet, and, if
the gods are kind, Juliet for me!"

His reflections were interrupted by the arrival of the station hack. He
instantly surmised that the man who hurried toward the house was Colonel
Kent, and, on the veranda, intercepted him.

"Colonel Kent?"

"Yes. Doctor--?

"Middlekauffer, for purposes of introduction. For purposes of
conversation, 'Doctor Jack,' or just plain 'Jack.' Never cared much for
handles to names. You got my wire?"

"Yes. Who sent you here?"

"Forbes. Down here on the fifth. Met him out in the next State, at an
operation. He told me to come, as my business was the impossible. Told
me you'd stand for it, don't you know, and all that sort of thing?"

"I'm very glad. How is he?"

"Doing very nicely, all things considered."

"Is there a chance?" the Colonel cried, eagerly; "a real chance?"

"My dear man, until amputation is the only thing to be done, there's
always a chance. Personally, I'm very hopeful, though I've been called a
dreamer more than once. But we've got him chirked up a lot, and he's
getting his nerve back, and this morning I thought I detected a slight
improvement, though I was afraid to tell him so. We've all got to work
for him and work like the devil at that."

"If work will do it--"

"Nothing worth while is ever done without work. Go up and see him."

At the sound of a familiar step upon the stair, Allison turned deathly
white. He waited, scarcely daring to breathe, until the half-closed door
opened, and his father stood before him, smiling in welcome. Allison
sprang forward, unbelieving, until his hand touched his father's, not
cold, as though he had risen from the grave, but warmly human and alive.

"Lad, dear lad! I've come back at last!" Allison's answering cry of joy
fairly rang through the house. "Dad! Oh, Dad! I thought you were dead!"

XXI

SAVED--AND LOST

Alternately possessed by hope and doubt, the young surgeon worked during
the weeks that followed as he had never worked before. He kept his doubt
to himself, however, and passed on his hope to the others when he could
do so conscientiously. Allison had ceased to ask questions, but eagerly
watched the doctor's face. He knew, without being told, just when the
outlook was dubious and when it was encouraging.

The doctor did not permit either Rose or Colonel Kent to hope too much.
Both were with Allison constantly, and Madame drove over three or four
times a week. Gradually a normal atmosphere was established, and,
without apparent effort, they kept Allison occupied and amused.

It seemed only natural and right that Rose should be there, and both
Allison and his father had come to depend upon her, in a way, as though
she were the head of the household. The servants came to her for orders,
people who came to inquire for Allison asked for her, and she saved the
Colonel from many a lonely evening after Allison had said good-night and
the Doctor had gone out for a long walk as he said, "to clear the
cobwebs from his brain."

Because of Isabel, whom he felt that he could not meet, the Colonel did
not go over to Bernard's. Allison had not alluded to her in any way, but
Madame had told the Colonel at the first opportunity. He had said,
quietly: "A small gain for so great a loss," and made no further
comment, yet it was evident that he was relieved.

Rose and Allison were back upon their old friendly footing, to all
intents and purposes. Never by word or look did Rose betray herself;
never by the faintest hint did Allison suggest that their relation to
each other had in any way been changed. He was frankly glad to have her
with him, urged her to come earlier and to stay later, and gratefully
accepted every kindness she offered.

Perhaps he had forgotten--Rose rather thought he had, but her self-
revelation stood before her always like a vivid, scarlet hour in a
procession of grey days. Yet the sting and shame of it were curiously
absent, for nothing could exceed the gentle courtesy and deference that
Allison instinctively accorded her. He saw her always as a thing apart;
a goddess who, through divine pity, had stooped for an instant to be a
woman--and had swiftly returned to her pedestal.

Sustained by the joy of service, Rose asked no more. Only to plan little
surprises for him, to anticipate every unspoken wish, to keep him cheery
and hopeful, to read or play to him without being asked--these things
were as the life-blood to her heart.

She had blossomed, too, into a new beauty. The forty years had put lines
of silver into her hair, but had been powerless to do more. Her lovely
face, where the colour came and went, the fleeting dimple at the corner
of her mouth and the crimson curve of her lips were eloquent with the
finer, more subtle charm of maturity. Her shining eyes literally
transfigured her. In their dark depths was a mysterious exaltation, as
from some secret, holy rapture too great for words.

Allison saw and felt it, yet did not know what it was. Once at sunset,
when they were talking idly of other things, he tried to express it.

"I don't know what it is, Rose, but there's something about you lately
that makes me feel--well, as though I were in a church at an Easter
service. The sun through the stained glass window, the blended fragrance
of incense and lilies, and the harp and organ playing the Intermezzo
from Cavalleria--all that sort of thing, don't you know?"

"Why shouldn't your best friend be glad," she had answered gently, "when
you have come to your own Easter--your rising from the dead?"

The dull colour surged into his face, then retreated in waves. "If you
can be as glad as that," he returned, clearing his throat, "I'd be a
brute ever to let myself be discouraged again."

That night, during a wakeful hour, his thoughts went back to Isabel. For
the first time, he saw the affair in its true light--a brief, mad
infatuation. He had responded to Isabel's youth and beauty and an old
moonlit garden full of roses much as his violin answered to his touch
upon the strings. "Had answered," he corrected himself, trying not to
flinch at the thought.

Even if his hand should heal, it was scarcely possible that he would
ever play again, and he knew, as well as anyone, what brilliant promise
the future had held for him. He remembered how wisely he had been
trained from the very beginning; how Aunt Francesca had insisted upon
mathematics, Latin, and chemistry, as well as literature, history, and
modern languages.

He had protested to her only once. She had replied kindly, but firmly,
that while broad culture and liberal education might not, in itself,
create an artist, yet it could not possibly injure one. Since then, he
had seen precocious children, developed in one line at the expense of
all others, fail ignominiously in maturity because there was no
foundation. The Child Wonder who had thrilled all Europe at nine, by his
unnatural mastery of the violin, was playing in an orchestra in a Paris
cafe, where one of the numerous boy sopranos was the head waiter.

How disappointed Aunt Francesca must be, even though she had too much
self-control to show it! And his father! Allison swallowed a lump in his
throat. After a lifetime of self-sacrificing devotion, the Colonel had
seen all his efforts fail, but he had taken the blow standing, like the
soldier that he was. In vain, many a time, Allison had wished that some
of his father's fine courage might have been transmitted to him.

And Rose--dear Rose! How persistently she held the new way open before
him; how steadily she insisted that the creative impulse was higher than
interpretative skill! How often she had reminded him of Carlyle's
stirring call: "Produce, produce! Though it be but the merest fraction
of a fragment, produce it, in God's name!" He had noticed that the
materials for composition were always close at hand, though she never
urged him to work.

He had come gradually to depend upon Rose--a great deal more than he
realised. Quite often he perceived the truth of the saying that "a blue-
ribbon friendship is better than an honourable mention love." It was
evident that Isabel had never loved him, though she had been pleased and
flattered by his love for her.

Even at the time that Aunt Francesca and Rose had congratulated him, and
he had kissed them both in friendly fashion, he had taken passing note
of the difference between Isabel and Rose. Of course it was only that
Isabel was made of ice and Rose of flesh and blood, but still, it was
pleasant to remember that--

His thoughts began to stray into other fields. Rose was his promised
wife, as far as name went, yet she treated him with the frank good
comradeship that a liberal social code makes possible between men and
women. As far as Rose was concerned, there was no sentiment in the
world.

When she read to him, it was invariably a story of adventure or of
humorous complications, or a well-chosen exposition of some recent
advance in science or art. Their conversation was equally impersonal,
even at the rare times they chanced to be alone. Rose made Colonel Kent,
Aunt Francesca, Doctor Jack, and even the nurse equally welcome to
Allison's society.

He went freely from room to room on the upper floor, but had not yet
been downstairs, as a possible slip on the steps might do irreparable
injury. Doctor Jack wanted to get him downstairs and outdoors, believing
that actual contact with the earth is almost as good for people as it is
for plants, but saw no way to manage it without a stretcher, which he
knew Allison would violently resent.

The twins came occasionally, by special invitation, though nobody
noticed that it was always Doctor Jack who suggested it. Once they
brought a pan of Juliet's famous fudges, which were politely appreciated
by the others and extravagantly praised by the Doctor. The following day
he was rewarded by a private pan of especially rich fudges--but Romeo
brought it, on his way to the post-office.

There was a daily card-party upon the upper veranda, and sometimes meals
were served there. The piano had been moved upstairs into a back room.
The whole-hearted devotion of the household was beautiful to behold, yet
underneath it all, like an unseen current, was the tense strain of
waiting.

It was difficult not to annoy Doctor Jack with questions. Rose and the
Colonel continually reminded themselves and each other that he would be
only too glad to bring encouragement at the moment he found it, and that
by quiet and patience they could help him most.

Juliet had pleaded earnestly with Doctor Jack to save Allison's hand.
"If you don't," she said, with uplifted eyes, "I'll be miserable all the
rest of my life."

"Bless your little heart," the Doctor had answered, kindly; "I'd do
'most anything to keep you from being miserable, even the impossible,
which happens to be my specialty."

She did not quite understand, but sent a burnt offering to the Doctor,
in the shape of a chocolate cake. He had returned the compliment by
sending her the biggest box of candy she had ever seen, and, as it
arrived about noon, she and Romeo had feasted upon it until they could
eat no more, and had been uncomfortably ill for two days. Romeo had
attributed their misfortune to the candy itself, but Juliet believed
that their constitutions had been weakened by their penitential fare,
and, as soon as she was able, proved her point by finishing the last
sweet morsel without painful results.

The Summer waned and tints of palest gold appeared here and there upon
the maples. The warm wind had the indefinable freshness of the Autumn
sea, blown far inland at dawn. Allison became impatient and restless,
the Colonel went off alone for long, moody walks; even Doctor Jack began
to show the effects of the long strain.

Only Rose was serene. Fortunately, no one guessed the tumult that lay
beneath her outward calm. Her manner toward Allison was, if anything,
more impersonal than ever, though she failed in no thoughtful kindness,
no possible consideration. He accepted it all as a matter of course, but
began to wish, vaguely, for something more.

He forebore to remind her of their strange relation, and could not
allude to the night he had kissed her, while his fiancee stood near by.
Yet, late one afternoon, when she had excused herself a little earlier
than usual, he called her back.

"Rose?"

"Yes?" She returned quickly and stood before him, just out of his reach.
"What is it? What can I do for you?"

The tone was kind but impersonal, as always. "Nothing," he sighed,
turning his face away.

That night she pondered long. What could Allison want that she had not
given? The blood surged into her heart for an instant, then retreated.
"Nonsense," she said to herself in tremulous anger. "It's impossible!"

Afterward it seemed continually to happen that she was alone with
Allison when the time came to say good-night and drive home, or walk,
escorted by Colonel Kent or the Doctor. By common consent, they seemed
to make excuses to leave the room as the hour of departure approached,
and she always found it easier when someone was there.

Again, when she had made her adieux and had reached the door leading
into the hall, Allison called her back.

"Yes?" "Couldn't you--just once, you know--for good-night?" he asked,
with difficulty.

His face made his meaning clear. Rose bent, kissed him tenderly upon the
forehead, and quickly left the room. Her heart was beating so hard that
she did not know she stumbled upon the threshold, nor did she hear his
low: "Thank you--dear."

That night she could not sleep. "I can't," she said to herself,
miserably; "I can't possibly go on, if--Oh, why should he make it so
hard for me!"

If the future was to be possible on the lines already laid down, he,
too, must keep the impersonal attitude. Yet, none the less, she was
conscious of an uplifting joy that would not be put aside, but
insistently demanded its right of expression.

She did not dare trust herself to see Allison again, and yet she must.
She could not fail him now, when he needed her so much, nor could she
ask the others to see that they were not left alone. One day might be
gained for respite by the plea of a headache, which is woman's friend as
often as it is her enemy.

And, after that one day, what then? What other excuse could she make
that would not seem heartless and cold?

It was an old saying of Aunt Francesca's that "when you can't see
straight ahead, it's because you're about to turn a corner." She
tormented herself throughout the night with futile speculations that led
to nothing except the headache which she had planned to offer as an
excuse.

A brief note gave her the day to herself, and also brought flowers from
Allison, with a friendly note in his own hand. Doctor Jack was the
messenger and took occasion to offer his services in the conquest of the
headache, but Rose declined with thanks, sending down word that she
preferred to sleep it off.

Though breakfast might be a movable feast at Madame's, it was always
consistently late. It was nearly nine o'clock in the morning when the
telephone wakened Madame from a dreamless sleep. She listened until it
became annoying, but no one answered it. Finally she got up, rather
impatiently, and went to it herself, anticipating Rose by only a minute.

Tremulous with suspense, Rose waited, scarcely daring to breathe until
Madame turned with a cry of joy, the receiver falling from her nerveless
hand. "Rose! Rose! he's saved! Our boy is saved! He's saved, do you
understand?"

"Truly? Is it sure?"

"Blessedly sure! Oh, Rose, he's saved!"

The little old lady was sobbing in an ecstasy of relief.

Rose led her to a couch and waited quietly until she was almost calm,
then went back to her own room. Once more her world was changed, as long
ago she had seen how it must be with her should the one thing happen.
She, with the others, had hoped and prayed for it; her dearest dream had
come true at last, and left her desolate.

She was unselfishly glad for Allison, for the Colonel, Aunt Francesca,
Doctor Jack, the sorrowing twins, and, in a way, for herself. It had
been given her to serve him, and she had not hoped for more. It made
things easier now, though she had not thought the corner would be turned
in just this way.

Having made up her mind and completed her plans, she went to Madame as
soon as she was dressed. She had hidden her paleness with so little
rouge that even Madame's keen eyes could not suspect it.

"Aunt Francesca," she began, without preliminary, "I've got to go away."

"Why, dear, and where? For how long?"

"Because I'm so tired. Things have been hard for me--over there, lately
--and I don't care where I go."

"I see," returned Madame, tenderly. "You want to go away for a rest.
You've needed it for a long time."

"Yes," Rose nodded, swinging easily into the lie that did not deceive
either. "Oh, Aunt Francesca, can I go to-day?"

"Surely--at any hour you choose."

"And you'll--make it right?"

"Indeed I will. I'll just say that you've been obliged to go away on
business--to look after some investments for both of us, and I hope
you'll stay away long enough to get the rest and change you've needed
for almost a year."

"Oh, Aunt Francesca, how good you are! But where? Where shall I go?"

Madame had been thinking of that. She knew the one place where Rose
could go, and attain her balance in solitude, untroubled by needless
questions or explanations. With the feeling of the mother who gives her
dead baby's dainty garments to a living child sorely in need, she spoke.

"To my house up in the woods--the little house where love lived, so long
ago."

Rose's pale lips quivered for an instant. "What have I to do with love?"

"Go to the house where he lived once, and perhaps you may find out."

"I will--I'll be glad to go. If I could make the next train, could you
arrange to have a trunk follow me?"

"Of course. Go on, dear. I know how it happens sometimes, that one can't
stay in one place any longer. I suffered from wanderlust until I was
almost seventy, and it's a long time since you've been away."

"And you'll promise not to tell anybody?"

"I promise."

While Rose was packing a suit-case, Madame brought her a rusty, old-
fashioned key, and a card on which she had written directions for the
journey. "I've ordered the carriage," she said, "and I'll drive down
with you to see you safely off."

After the packing was completed and while there was still nearly an hour
to wait before the carriage would come, Rose locked her door, and, after
many failures, achieved her note:

"MY DEAR ALLISON:

"You don't know how glad I am for you and how glad I shall be all the
rest of my life. I've hoped and dreamed and prayed from the very
beginning that it might be so, and I believe that, in time, you'll have
back everything you have lost.

"Now that you no longer need me, I am going away to attend to some
necessary business for Aunt Francesca and myself, and perhaps to rest a
little while in some new place before I go back to my work.

"Of course our make-believe engagement expires automatically now, and I
hope you'll soon find the one woman meant to make you happy. I am glad
to think that I've helped you a little when you came to a hard place,
for the most that any one of us may do for another is to smooth the
road.

"Remember me to the others, say good-bye for me, and believe me, with
all good wishes,

"Your friend always,

"ROSE."

When she sealed and addressed it, she had a queer sense of closing the
door, with her own hands, upon all the joy Life might have in store for
her in years to come. Yet the past few weeks were secure, beyond the
power of change or loss, and her pride was saved.

No one could keep her from loving him, and the thought brought a certain
comfort to her sore heart. Wherever he might be and whatever might
happen to him, she could still love him from afar, and have, for her
very own, the woman's joy of utmost giving.

When the carriage came, she went down, and, without a word put her note
into Aunt Francesca's faithful hands. Isabel had not appeared,
fortunately, and it was not necessary to leave any message--Aunt
Francesca would make it right, as she always had with everybody.

When the little old lady lifted her face, saying: "Good-bye, dear, come
back to me soon," Rose's heart misgave her. "I'll stay," she said,
brokenly; "I won't leave you."

But Madame only smiled, and nodded toward the waiting train. She stood
on the platform, waving her little lace-bordered handkerchief, until the
last car rounded the curve and the fluttering bit of white that was
waved in answer had vanished.

Then Madame sighed, wiped her eyes, and drove home.

XXII

A BIRTHDAY PARTY

Allison received the note from Rose at the time he was expecting Rose
herself, and was keenly disappointed. "She might at least have stopped
long enough to say good-bye," he said to his father.

"Don't be selfish, lad," laughed the Colonel. "We owe her now a debt
that we can never hope to pay."

The young man's face softened. "What a brick she has been!" Then, to
himself, he added: "if she had loved me, she couldn't have done more."

Life seemed very good to them both that crisp September morning. Just
after breakfast Doctor Jack had announced, definitely, that the crushed
hand was saved, unless there should be some unlooked-for complication
"But mind you," he insisted, "I don't promise any violin-playing, and
there'll be scars, but we'll make it look as well as we can. Anyhow,
you'll not be helpless."

Allison smiled happily. "Why can't I play, if it heals up all right?"

"There may be a nerve or two that won't work just right, or a twisted
muscle, or something. However we'll keep hoping."

The heavy weight that had lain so long upon Allison's heart was slow in
lifting. At first he could not believe the good news, greatly to Doctor
Jack's disgust.

"You don't seem to care much," he remarked. "I supposed you'd turn at
least one somersault. The Colonel is more pleased than you are."

"Dear old dad," said Allison, gratefully. "I owe him everything."

"Everything?" repeated the Doctor, with lifted brows. "And where does
Jonathan Ebenezer Middlekauffer come in, to say nothing of the future
Mrs. Kent?"

Allison's face clouded for an instant. "I'll never forget what you've
done for me, but there isn't any future Mrs. Kent."

"No? Why I thought--"

"So did I, but she's thrown me over and gone away. This morning she sent
me a note of congratulation and farewell."

"Upon my word! What have you done to her?"

"Nothing. She says I don't need her any more now, so she's going away."

Doctor Jack paced back and forth on the veranda with his hands in his
pockets. "The darkly mysterious ways of the ever-feminine are wonderful
beyond the power of words to portray. Apparently you've had to choose
between your hand and hers."

"I'm not sure," returned Allison, thoughtfully, "that I wouldn't rather
have hers than mine."

"Brace up, old man. Get well and go after her. The world isn't big
enough to keep a man away from the woman he wants."

"But," answered Allison, dejectedly, "she doesn't care for me. It was
only womanly pity, and now that I don't need that, I've lost her."

"She doesn't care for you!" repeated the Doctor. "Why, man, how can you
sit there and tell a lie like that? Of course she cares!"

Allison turned to look at him in astonishment. "It isn't possible!"

"Isn't it? Then I don't know anything about human nature, though I must
confess I'm not up much on the feminine part of it. How long--"

"Just since the accident. The girl I was going to marry let me release
her. She didn't want a cripple, you know."

"And Miss Bernard did, and you've disappointed her?"

"Something like that."

"You seem to have had fierce luck with girls. One gives you up because
you've only got one hand, and the other because you've got two. There's
no pleasing women. Hello--here comes another note. Maybe she's changed
her mind."

For a breathless instant Allison thought so, too, but Doctor Jack was
opening it. "Mine," he said. "It's an invitation to Crosby's. It seems
that they come of age day after to-morrow, and I'm invited out to supper
to help celebrate. I won't go, or anything, will I? Oh, no, of course
not! I haven't seen 'em for a week. Are presents expected?"

"Your presence seems to be expected," remarked Allison.

"I'm glad you've got that out of your system," the Doctor retorted, with
a scornful smile. "You ought to improve right along now."

"Is it a party?"

"They don't say so. I hope it isn't."

However, when Doctor Jack strolled up the dusty road, a carriage that
must have come from Crosby's passed him. He stopped short, wildly
considering an impulse of flight. Then he went on bravely, smiling at
the thought that any entertainment given by the twins could be by any
possibility, a formal affair.

The other guest was Isabel, whom Doctor Jack had not met and of whom he
knew nothing. She observed him narrowly when opportunity offered, for
she knew who he was, and wondered what he had heard of her. Soon she
became certain that her name carried no meaning to him, for he talked
freely of Allison and the Colonel and frankly shared the joy of the
twins at the welcome news.

"Oh," cried Juliet, clapping her hands in glee. "It's the very best
birthday present we could have, isn't it, Romie?"

"I should say," replied that young man, with an expansive smile. "Say,"
he added to Doctor Jack, "you must be a brick."

"I've only done my best," he responded, modestly.

Isabel could say nothing for some little time. She was furiously angry
with Aunt Francesca because she had not told her. The day that Rose went
away, everyone in the house had been very glad about something, even to
the servants, but she had asked no questions and received no
information, except that Rose had been obliged to go away very suddenly
upon business of immediate importance.

"You must be awful glad," said Juliet, to Isabel.

"Of course," answered Isabel, coldly, clearing her throat.

"He must feel pretty good," Romeo observed.

"Yes," returned Doctor Jack, "except that he's lost his girl."

Isabel flushed and nervously turned on her finger the diamond ring that
she still wore.

"He's had fierce luck with girls," resumed the Doctor, unthinkingly.
"One passed him up because he was hurt, and the other because he was
going to get well."

The tense silence that ensued indicated that he had made a mistake of
some sort. It had not occurred to him that the twins did not know of
Allison's engagement to Rose, nor did he suspect Isabel's identity.

Juliet was staring at Isabel in pained surprise. "Did you?" she asked,
slowly, "throw him over because he got hurt?"

"He offered to release me," said Isabel, in a small, cold voice, "and I
accepted. I did not know until just now that Cousin Rose had taken my
leavings." The older woman's mysterious departure presented itself to
her now in a new light.

"Suffering Cyrus," said Doctor Jack, aloud, "but I have put my foot into
it. Look here, kind friends, I never was meant for a parlour, and I
always make mistakes when I stray into one. My place is in a hospital
ward or at the bedside of those who have been given up to die. The
complex social arena is not where I shine to my best advantage. There
are too many rings to keep track of at once, and my mind gets cross-
eyed."

"Come on up to the attic," suggested Juliet, with a swift change of
subject, "and we'll do stunts on the trapeze."

Isabel and Doctor Jack sat side by side on a battered old trunk in stony
silence while the twins were donning their gymnasium costumes.
Fortunately, it did not take long and the sight of Juliet hanging by her
feet furnished the needed topic of conversation. The lithe little body
seemed to be made of steel fibres. She swayed back and forth, catching
Romeo as he made a flying leap from the other trapeze, as easily as
another girl would have wielded a tennis racquet.

At length Doctor Jack interposed a friendly word of warning. "Look here,
kid," he said, "you're made of flesh and blood, you know, just like the
rest of us. Better cut out that trapeze business."

"I don't know why," returned Juliet, resentfully, as she slipped
gracefully to the floor, right side up. "I'm as strong as Romie is, or
almost as strong."

"Girls do it in the circus," Romeo observed, wiping his flushed face.

"Ever heard of any of 'em living to celebrate their hundredth birthday?"
queried Doctor Jack, significantly.

The twins admitted that they had not. "I don't care," cried Juliet, "I'd
rather live ten years and keep going, than live to be a hundred and have
to sit still all the time."

"No danger of your sitting still too long," returned Doctor Jack, good-
humouredly. "It's hot up here, isn't it?"

"Rather warm," Romeo agreed. "You folks can go downstairs until we get
on our other clothes, if you like."

They had reached the head of the stairs when Isabel changed her mind. "I
believe I'll wait for Juliet," she said, turning back.

So the Doctor went down alone, inwardly reviling himself for his unlucky
speech, and glad of an opportunity to contemplate the characteristic
residence of the twins.

The whole house was, frankly, a place where people did as they chose,
and the furniture bore marks of having been used not wisely, but too
well. Everything was clean, though not aggressively so. He ascribed the
absence of lace curtains to Romeo and the Cloisonne vase to Juliet. The
fishing rods in one corner were probably due to both.

When the others came down, Juliet tied a big blue gingham apron over her
white muslin gown and excused herself. She had been cooking for the
better part of two days and took a housewifely pride in doing everything
herself. They had chosen the things they liked the most, so the dinner
was unusual, as dinners go.

Isabel, eating daintily, made no effort to conceal her disdain, but
Doctor Jack ate heartily, praised everything, and brought the blush of
pleasure to Juliet's rosy cheeks.

Romeo, at the head of the table, radiated the hospitality of the true
host, yet a close observer would have noted how often he cast admiring
glances at Isabel. She was so dainty, so beautifully gowned and
elaborately coiffured, that Romeo compared her with his sister greatly
to the disadvantage of the latter.

Juliet's hair was unruly and broke into curls all around her face;
Isabel's was in perfect order, with every wave mathematically exact.
Juliet's face was tanned and rosy; Isabel's pale and cool. Juliet's
hands were rough and her finger-tips square; Isabel's were white and
tapering, with perfectly manicured nails. And their gowns--there was no
possible comparison there. Both were in white, but Romeo discovered that
there might be a vast difference in white gowns.

Afterward, the guests were taken out into the yard, and led to the
comprehensive grave of the nineteen dogs. Minerva kept at a safe
distance, but the five puppies gambolled and frolicked, even to the
verge of the sepulchre. Romeo desired to send a dog to Allison, and
generously offered Isabel her choice, but she refused.

"I'll take the pup," said the Doctor. "It might amuse him, and anyhow,
he'd like to know that you thought of him."

Isabel had strolled down toward the barn. Juliet hesitated, duty bidding
her follow Isabel and inclination holding her back. Presently Isabel
returned, and her face was surprisingly animated.

"Is that our car in the barn?" she asked. Her manner betrayed great
excitement.

"Why, it's Allison Kent's car, isn't it?" inquired Romeo.

"I thought it was mine. Colonel Kent gave it to me for a wedding
present."

"I thought you couldn't keep the wedding presents unless the wedding
came off," Juliet observed, practically.

"I've still got my ring," said Isabel. "Allison said he wanted me to
keep it, and he gave me his violin, too. I should think they'd want me
to keep the car."

"Better make sure," suggested Doctor Jack, politely.

"People don't scatter automobiles around carelessly among their friends,
as a general rule," observed Juliet.

"I wish I could get it up to Kent's," Romeo said, thoughtfully. "It
always reminds me--here."

"I'd just as soon drive it back," the Doctor answered. "It's more of a
trot out here than I supposed it was."

"Why, yes," cried Juliet. "You can drive it back to-night and take
Isabel home!"

"Charmed," lied the Doctor, with an awkward bow.

So it happened that Isabel once more climbed into the red car and went
back over the fateful road. The machine ran well, but it seemed to
require the driver's entire attention, for his conversation consisted of
brief remarks to which answers even more brief were vouchsafed.

When he turned, on the wide road in front of Madame Bernard's, after
leaving Isabel at the gate, she lingered in the shadow, watching, until
he was out of sight. The throb of the engine became fainter and fainter,
then died away altogether. Isabel sighed and went in, wondering if
Allison, after giving her the ring and the violin, would not also want
her to have the car. Or, if that seemed too much, and she should send
back the violin--she pondered over it until almost dawn, then went to
sleep.

The following afternoon, while Madame Bernard slept, Isabel sat idly in
the living-room, looking out of the window, though, as she told herself
fretfully, there was not much use of looking out of the window when
nobody ever went by. But no sooner had she phrased the thought than she
heard the faint chug-chug of an approaching motor.

She moved back, into the shelter of the curtain, and presently saw the
big red automobile whizz by. Doctor Jack, hatless and laughing, was at
the wheel. Beside him was Colonel Kent.

Had they gone out and left Allison alone? Surely, since there was no one
else. Fortune favoured her if she wished to see him. But did she dare?

Isabel was nothing if not courageous. Arming herself with an excuse in
the shape of the violin, she sallied forth and made her way to Kent's,
meeting no one upon the well-worn path.

As it happened, Allison was on the lower veranda, walking back and
forth, persistently accompanied by the Crosby pup. Assisted by the
Colonel and Doctor Jack, he had come down without accident, and had
promised to go out in the car with them a little later.

When he saw Isabel coming up the walk, he stopped in astonishment. He
did not go to meet her, but offered her a chair and said, with formal
politeness: "How do you do? This is an unexpected pleasure."

"I brought this," began Isabel, offering him the violin.

He took it with a smile. "Thank you. I don't know that I shall ever use
it again, but I am glad to have it."

There was a pause and Isabel moved restlessly in her chair. Then she
slipped the ring from her finger. "Do you want this now?" she asked. Her
face was a shade paler.

Allison laughed. "Indeed I don't. Whom could I give it to?"

"Rose," suggested Isabel, maliciously.

Allison sighed and turned his face away. "She wouldn't take it," he
said, sadly.

Isabel slipped it back on her finger, evidently relieved. "I'm glad
you're better," she went on, clearing her throat.

"Thank you. So am I."

"I saw your father, out in the car. The Doctor was with him."

"Yes. They're coming back for me in a little while."

"It's a lovely car. The Doctor brought me home in it last night, from
Crosby's."

"So he told me." Allison did not see fit to say just how much Doctor
Jack had told him. He smiled a little at the recollection of the young
man's remorseful confession.

"I told them," continued Isabel, "that I thought it was mine--that your
father had given it to me, but it seems I was mistaken."

"It seems so," Allison agreed. "Dad gave it to the Doctor this morning."

Isabel repressed a bitter cry of astonishment. "For keeps?"

"Yes, for keeps. It's little enough to give him after all he's done for
me. We both wanted him to have it."

"You could get another, couldn't you?"

"I suppose so, if I wanted it. People can usually get things they want,
if they are intangible."

"I wanted to tell you," resumed Isabel, "that I was sorry I acted the
way I did the last time I was here."

"Don't think of it," replied Allison, kindly. "It was very natural."

"It was all a great shock to me, and I was lame, and--and--I wish
everything could be as it was before," she concluded, with a faint flush
creeping into her face.

"That is the great tragedy of life, Isabel--that things can never be as
they were before. Sometimes they're worse, sometimes better, but the
world is never the same."

"Of course," she answered, without grasping his meaning, "but you're
going to be all right again now, and--that's the same."

Allison shrugged his shoulders and bit his lips to conceal a smile. "It
may be the same for me, but it couldn't be for you. I couldn't give you
any guarantee that it wouldn't happen again, you know. I might be run
over by a railroad train or a trolley car, or any one of a thousand
things might happen to me. There's always a risk."

Tears filled Isabel's eyes. "I don't believe you ever cared very much
for me," she said, her lips quivering.

"I did, Isabel," he answered, kindly, "but it's gone now. Even at that,
it lasted longer than you cared for me. Come, let's be friends."

He offered his hand. She put hers into it for a moment, then quickly
took it away. He noted that it was very cold.

"I must be going," she said, keeping her self-control with difficulty,
"Aunt Francesca will miss me."

"Thank you for coming--and for bringing the violin."

"You're welcome. Good-bye."

"Good-bye, Silver Girl. I hope you'll be happy."

Isabel did not answer, nor turn back. She went out of the gate and out
of his life, pride keeping her head high until she had turned the
corner. Then, very sorry for herself, she sat down and wept.

XXIII

"TEARS, IDLE TEARS"

"Say, Jule," inquired Romeo, casually, "why is it that you don't look
like a lady?"

"What do you mean?" demanded Juliet, bristling.

"I don't know just what I mean, but you seem so different from everybody
else."

"I'm clean, ain't I?"

"Yes," he admitted, grudgingly.

"And my hair is combed?"

"Sometimes."

"And my white dress is clean, isn't it?"

"Yes, but it doesn't look like--like hers, you know."

"Her? Who's 'her'?"

"You know--Isabel."

Juliet sighed and bit her lips. Her eyes filled with tears and she
winked very hard to keep them back. An ominous pain clutched at her
loyal little heart.

"What do you want me to do, Romie?" she asked, gently.

"Why, I don't know. Men never know about such things. Just make yourself
like her--that's all."

"Huh!" Juliet was scornful now. "I don't know whether I want to look
like her or not," she remarked, coldly.

"Why not?" he flashed back.

"And I don't want to be like her, either. She can't do anything. She
can't cook, or swing on the trapeze, or skate, or fish, or row, or swim,
or climb a tree, or ride horseback, or walk, or anything." "I could
teach her," mused Romeo, half to himself. "I taught you."

"Yes," cried Juliet, swallowing the persistent lump in her throat, "and
now you've done it, you're ashamed of me!"

"I didn't say so," he temporised.

"You didn't have to. Don't you suppose I can see?"

"Don't get so mad about it. She was laughing at you last night and so
was the Doctor. They didn't think it was nice for you to put on your
knickers and swing on the trapeze. Ladies don't do that."

"You taught me," she reminded him, quickly.

"Yes, but I didn't ask you to do it before everybody. You started it
yourself. Isabel wouldn't look at you, and you remember what the Doctor
said, don't you? He told you to cut it out."

"That was because he thought it was dangerous."

"'Tisn't dangerous, and he knows it. He knew it wasn't refined and lady-
like for you to do that before men."

"It was only a doctor," Juliet replied, in a small, thin voice. "They're
different from other people. I wouldn't let the Kents see me in my
knickers, and you know it."

"You would, too, if you wanted to. You're a perfect tomboy. You wouldn't
see Isabel doing that."

"Probably not," answered Juliet, dryly. "She's no more likely to do that
than I would be to go back on the man I'd promised to marry, just
because his hand was hurt."

"You'll never have a chance to go back on anybody, so you don't know
what you'd do."

"Why won't I?"

"Because," answered Romeo, choosing his words carefully, "when a man
gets married, he wants to marry a lady, not a tomboy." For some unknown
reason, he resented any slur cast at Isabel.

"And," replied Juliet, cuttingly, "when a lady gets married, she wants
to marry a gentleman." The accent carried insult with it, and Romeo left
the house, slamming the door and whistling, defiantly until he was out
of hearing.

There was no longer any need for Juliet to keep back the tears.
Stretched at full length upon the disembowelled sofa, she buried her
face in the pillow and wept until she could weep no more. Then she
bathed her face, and pinned up her tangled hair, and went to the one
long mirror the Crosby mansion boasted of, to take an inventory of
herself.

She could see that Romeo was right--she didn't look like a lady. Her
skirt was too, short and didn't hang evenly, and her belt was wrong
because she had no corsets. Juliet made a wry face at the thought of a
corset. None of her clothes fitted like Isabel's, her face was tanned,
her hands rough and red, and her nails impossible.

"I look just like a boy," Juliet admitted to herself, "dressed up in
girl's clothes. If Romie's hair was long, and he had on this dress, he'd
look just like me."

Pride forbade her to go to Isabel and inquire into the mysteries of her
all-pervading femininity. Anyhow, Isabel would laugh at her. Anybody
would laugh at her--unless Miss Bernard--but she had gone away. She was
a lady, even more than Isabel, and so was the little old lady everybody
called "Aunt Francesca."

If she could see "Aunt Francesca," she wouldn't be ashamed to tell her
what Romeo had said. If she only knew what to do, she could do it, for
she had plenty of money. Juliet dimly discerned that money was very
necessary if one would be the same sort of "lady" that the others were.

"If Mamma hadn't died," said Juliet, to herself, "I guess I'd have been
as much of a lady as anybody, and nobody would have dared call me a
tomboy." Her heart ached for the gentle little mother who had died many
years ago. "She would have known," sighed Juliet. "Mamma was a lady if
anybody ever was, and she didn't have the money we've got either."

The life of the Crosbys had been bare of luxuries and sometimes even of
comforts, until the considerate uncle died and left his money to the
twins. As fortunes go, it was not much, but it seemed inexhaustible to
them because they did not know how to spend it.

"I'll go this very day," thought Juliet, "and see Aunt Francesca. I'll
ask her. If Isabel is there, I'll have to wait, but if I don't ask for
Isabel, maybe I won't see her."

Having decided upon a plan of action, the way seemed easier, so Juliet
went about her daily duties with a lighter heart, and even sang after a
fashion, as she awkwardly pressed the wrinkles from her white muslin
gown. Though it was September, it was still warm enough to wear it.

Romeo, having only the day before attained his maturity, had taken unto
himself the masculine privilege of getting angry at someone else for
what he himself had done. He was furious with Juliet, though he did not
trouble himself to ask why. "The idea," he muttered, "of her criticising
Isabel!"

His wounded sensibilities impelled him to walk past the Bernard house,
very slowly, two or three times, but there was no one in sight. He went
to the post-office as a mere matter of habit; there was seldom any mail
for the Crosbys except on the first of the month, when the lawyer's
formal note, "enclosing remittance," came duly to hand. Nobody seemed to
be around--there was nothing to do. It would have been natural to go
back home, but he was too angry for that, and inwardly vowed to stay
away long enough to bring Juliet to her senses.

He recalled the night he had called upon Isabel and had not reached home
until late. He remembered the torrent of tears and Juliet's cry: "Oh,
Romie! Romie! I don't care where you've been as long as I've got you
back!" It pleased his masculine sense of superiority to know that he had
power over a woman's tears--to make them come or go, as he chose.

He sauntered slowly toward Kent's, thinking that he might while away an
hour or two there. It was a long time until midnight, and there seemed
to be nothing to do but to sit and wait. He could ask about the car and
whether it was all right now. If Doctor Jack could run it, maybe they
could go out together for a little spin. It would be nice to go by his
own house and never even turn his head. And, if they could get Isabel to
go, too, it would teach Juliet a much-needed lesson.