. I
believe I could get along with her, now. I'm afraid I was childish,
before."

But he only shook his head. "The time for Miss Jessop has passed, dear
friend," he said quietly. "No nurse ever comes here."

"Then this is a private house," she began again, "their own home. And
I do not even know their names!"

"It is private because it is their own home--just that," he said.
"That is what a home is. It is a simple fact, but one that seems not
to have been included in your education."

"Why, Dr. Stanchon, what can you mean?" she cried. "My mother's
hospitality----"

"I mean that I do not consider an art museum a home, no matter how
highly the chef is paid," he said shortly.

"But there is the place on the Hudson----"

"That is a country club, nothing more," he interrupted. "Your mother
dismissed a butler once, because, though he offered eight liqueurs to a
guest, the guest asked for a ninth and the butler had neglected to
order it. I have attended her there for a really painful attack of
sciatica when none of her visitors knew that anything ailed her, though
she had been away from them for forty-eight hours."

"But that is mother's house, not mine," she protested, "and I do not
pretend to keep up----"

"You do not pretend to, because you could not do it," he interrupted
again. "Your father is a multi-millionaire and your husband is not.
But it is your constant ideal, nevertheless, and your failures to
realise it, even in the degree to which you have tried, have sapped
your vitality to a point which even you can understand now, I should
suppose."

She looked doubtingly at him.

"Do you really mean, Dr. Stanchon," she began, "that this dreadful
attack----"

"'Attack'!" he muttered brusquely, "'attack'! One would imagine I had
pulled you through pneumonia or peritonitis! If, after constant
sapping and mining and starving-out the garrison, it gives way and
falls defeated, you choose to call the day of surrender a yielding to
an attack, then you have had an attack."

And again he left her abruptly, a prey to creeping, ugly doubts. For
she had been very sorry for herself and the fatality that had stranded
her on the dreary coast where so many of her friends had met mysterious
wreckage.

"Has the doctor sent patients here before?" she asked her attendant the
next morning, when she sat, fresh and fragrant in her invalid ruffles,
at the window, watching the poultry yard, which somehow she had not