e robbed; and if a single letter is stolen it
will be yours to me. No man alive could resist a letter of yours
after he had once read one.

Is there not a note of tenderness here, a note that has crept in only
during the last few months? But what if there is? It occurred to me
after dinner that the question of his feeling for me is not the only,
nor even the principal one to be considered. The point under
advisement is, shall I allow him to love me when there is something
better in store for him?

Miss Blossom had scarcely left my room this evening when I heard a
pattering step and a hurried tap on my door. On my saying "Come," my
opposite neighbor slipped in and turned the key in the lock. It was an
unconventional and amusing performance, but I didn't mind. Somehow one
couldn't mind anything with such a spoiled baby.

"Good-evening, Zuleika!" she said. "No, you needn't smile and raise
your finger at me as if you were dying to tell me your name is
Abigail! Miss Blossom has gone for the night, hasn't she? I thought
so. You know it's the nurses' ball this evening, and there's only one
attendant on duty in each corridor from now to half-past nine. May I
have this big chair by the window? I am so bored with this place that
it excites me even to think how stupid it is. I almost wish I had a
symptom or two, just by way of sensation. Did you have Somnolina for
supper? I did, and some time I shall make a scene in the dining-room
when I watch the hundred and fifty dyspeptics simultaneously lifting
cups of Teaette or Somnolina to their parched lips."

"You ought to be ashamed," I chided, "when you know almost every one
who is here needs to be put upon a diet. You wouldn't expect
champagne, terrapin, and canvasback ducks?"

"I know it; don't scold, it makes you look like Cassandra. Isn't the
moonlight enchanting, and if this weren't a health resort wouldn't it
be a heaven upon earth?"

The broad, unscreened windows were wide open and vines of woodbine or
honeysuckle framed them on every side. A lake shone like a silver
mirror in the distant landscape and the elms and maples and chestnuts
swayed in the summer breeze. Little groups chatted on the broad
piazzas, and here and there on a rustic bench in the moonlight sat a
man and a woman--two minds with but a single thought, and that thought
his or her own solar plexus.

It was an hour for confidences, and I remember that my troubled heart
cried out for a strong, tried fr