s weakness.

"Though I am shameful to say such things as if they were excuses,
nothing excuses me. I am without justification. I say so most humbly to
you."

Weakly he leaned back among his cushions. Mrs. Carroll glanced at him
and hurried on.

"When the first fury of the disease was spent, you seemed distressed at
the sight of the Doctor, though you did not recognize him fully; so,
though he has not failed to come here twice each day, it is through the
nurses' reports and Bob's that he has been treating you. He can do so
much better for you now if you will see him."

"If I will see him?" he repeated. "Yes, I can at least make some little
amends for my folly--my distr-rust. But can I win back ever my
self-r-respect, so that you and other people can r-respect me? So
that----"

He stopped as Sydney's voice reached him. She was coming up the hill,
laughing with Bob.

Von Rittenheim looked appealingly at Mrs. Carroll.

"Sydney," she called, "go on to the house, dear, with Bob, and send
James here."

She rose and laid her hand tenderly on the bent head.

"Stay here a while. It is still quite warm enough for you."

She went slowly across the lawn and disappeared beneath the veranda's
roses. A level ray from the setting sun touched Friedrich's fair hair
with gold, and went on to be splintered into a thousand tiny shafts
against the swelling side of the silver cream-jug.

XIII

Reconciliation

The sunshine of a clear June day was beating upon the gravel of the
driveway, and a few woolly clouds, the forerunners of the early
afternoon's daily shower, clung over the tops of the southern
mountains.

Behind the screen of vines and climbing roses that sheltered the porch
von Rittenheim sat reading a New York paper of two days before. It was
the morning after his explanation with Mrs. Carroll, and the emotional
outcome of the talk had been a state of abasement of soul that had
sapped his little store of strength. His thin hands shook weakly, and
he continually changed his position, and glanced expectantly at the
long window which opened upon the gallery.

Sydney's voice inside the house made him clutch his paper nervously.
She spoke loudly, as in warning.

"The Baron? You'll find him on the porch, Dr. Morgan. The nurse says
he didn't sleep very well last night."

"He didn't? We must mend that." And the Doctor stepped from the window
and approached his long-unseen patient.

Von Rittenheim looked up int