a minute, and
the Doctor is waiting by now. Good-bye, my dear." And before Anne could
protest she was gone, having learned, by experience, that the way to
terminate useless argument with the one who is not strong enough to be
allowed to argue is by making early escape.

That afternoon, having recovered from the two surprises of the morning,
Anne asked for pencil and paper. Miss Arden, supplying them, stipulated
that their use should cover but five minutes.

"It is one of the last things we let patients do," she said, "though it
is the thing they all want to do first. There is nothing so tiring as
letter writing."

"I'm not going to write a letter," Anne replied, "just a hail to a
fellow sufferer. Only I'm no sufferer, and I'm afraid he is."

She wrote her note, and it was presently handed to Jordan King. He had
wondered very much what sort of answer he should have, feeling that
nothing could reveal the sort of person this girl was so surely as a
letter, no matter how short. He had been sure he recognized education in
her speech, breeding in her manner, high intelligence as well as beauty
in her face, but--well, the letter would reveal. And so it did, though
it was written in a rather shaky hand, in pencil, on one of Miss Arden's
hospital record blanks--of all things!

DEAR MR. KING:

It is the most wonderful thing in the world to be sitting up
far enough to be able to write and tell you how sorry I am
that you are lying down. But Mrs. Burns assures me that you
are fast improving and that soon you will be about again.
Meanwhile you are turning your time of waiting to a glorious
account in teaching poor Franz to speak English. Surely he
must have been longing to speak it, so that he might tell you
the things in his heart--about that dreadful night. But I know
you don't want me to write of that, and I won't.

Of course I should care to have him play for me, and I hope
he may do it soon--to-morrow, perhaps. I wonder if he knows
the Schubert "_Fruehlingstraum_"--how I should love to hear it!
As for your interesting plan for relieving the passing hours,
I should hardly be human if I did not respond to it! Only
please never write when you don't feel quite like it--and
neither will I.

The white lilacs were even more beautiful than the roses and
the daffodils. There was a long row of white lilac trees at
one side of a