voice. "Go back as far
as the tree. Don't you know it's scarlet fever? I'll go in at once if
you come nearer."

Patricia retreated to the tree, and Doris stood with one hand clutching
the cloak and the light strong on her face. She looked more beautiful
than ever to Patricia's friendly eyes, and there was a calm strength in
her manner that awed while it comforted her. All consciousness of
herself was gone, and, Patricia felt, gone forever, and in its place a
quiet courage that spoke of conquered pride and vanity and selfishness.
Doris Leighton had found herself.

In the hurried words that they exchanged there was a more solid welding
of their renewed friendship than the telephone could have accomplished
for them in many interviews, and they parted at the end of the allotted
five minutes, each with a growing faith in the mercies of that
Providence which had led them to a nobler comradeship.

Patricia, promising to give Doris' messages to Elinor and the rest,
hurried off, leaving the drawing-room windows once more blank and
impassive. She ran into the studio as Griffin was rising to go, with
her umbrella, reclaimed from the stand, still dripping slow occasional
drops unheeded on the polished floor.

They had not missed her, much to her surprise. She felt she had
undergone so much, and they were still in the very state she had left
them. She blurted out her triumphant account of the new Doris, almost
forgetting Geraldine, and to their excited questionings and comments
she flashed illuminating replies, making them see the very figure in
the muffled cloak with the courageous expression on its lovely face.

There was generous and general rejoicing at her account of the brief
interview, and a strong feeling that under this happier augury
Geraldine must recover. Patricia went to bed feeling that the storm of
the afternoon had been a type of her own day, and that for her the
stars were serenely shining after the tempest of doubt and estrangement.

"Geraldine won't die," she said fervently to Elinor as she put out the
light. "I _know_ she won't die."

And the morning proved her prophecy, for at the first inquiry came the
joyful news that the crisis was past and Geraldine already improving.

"Now we can go on our spree with clear minds," said Judith, as they sat
down to breakfast in the sunny sitting-room. "It's a perfect day and
Rockham will look too sweet for anything."

"What a beautiful description of a sp