the entire staff of
doctors, down to Hennessy, the keeper of the walks and swans, only smiled
and closed their eyes to all of Sheila's backsliding. For hadn't they all
believed in her? And hadn't they sent for her to come back to them again?
And which one of them had ever allowed a word of scandal to pass his
lips? So Peter smiled, too.

In those months he had come to read Sheila--so he thought--like an open
book. He had learned by heart all her moods, the good and the bad, the
sweet and the bitter. He knew she could be as divinely tender and
compassionate as a celestial mother; he also knew that she could be as
barren of sympathy and as relentless as fate itself. She could pour forth
her whole throbbing soul, impulsive, warm, and radiant, as a true Celt,
yet she could be as impersonal, terse, and cryptic as a marconigram. He
loved these very extremes in her, her unmitigated hatred for the things
she hated, and her unfailing love for the things she loved. She made no
pretense or boast for herself; she was what she was for all the world to
see. And Peter had found her the stanchest, sweetest, most vital--albeit
the most stubborn--piece of womanhood he had ever known. Her very nickname
of "Leerie" was her open letter of introduction to every one; her smile
and the wonder-light in her eyes were her best credentials. Small wonder
it was that her patients watched for her to come and that Peter felt he
could snap his fingers at the scandalmongers.

But Peter wasn't snapping them now--or smiling. His fists were doubled
tight in his pockets, and he clenched his teeth harder as he paced the
walk from pond to rest-house. How the accursed tongues of the gossips rang
in his head! "Rather odd the sanitarium should have sent for him, wasn't
it? Don't you know he was the young surgeon who was mixed up in that
affair with that popular nurse?"... "Oh yes, they hushed it up and sent
them both away."... "Nothing definite was ever explained, but they were
always together, just as they are now, and you can't get smoke without
some burning."... "Yes, Doctor Brainard and Miss O'Leary. Didn't you ever
hear about what happened three years ago?"

Peter's stride seemed to measure forth the length of each offending
tongue, and when he reached the end of his beaten track he swung about as
if to meet and silence them all, for all time. But instead he came face to
face with the two who had caused them to wag. So absorbed were the surgeon
and nurse