develop the communal spirit which
was so painfully lacking in the soul of the average Manhattanite.

So the milkman and the corner grocer, the newspaper man, and Hitty's
small brood of grand nieces and nephews, to say nothing of the Italian
fruit man's family, and her laundress's invalid daughter, were all
occupying a considerable place in Nancy's daily schedule. In a very
short interval she had the welfare of more than half a dozen families
on her hands, and was involved in all manner of enterprises of a
domestic nature,--from the designing of confirmation gowns to the
purchase of rubber-tired rolling chairs, and heterogeneous woolen
garments and other intimate necessities.

She was a little ashamed of her new line of activities, and still hurt
enough to shun the scrutiny of her friends, and thereby succeeded in
mystifying and alarming Billy and Dick and Betty and Caroline almost
beyond the limit of their endurance by resolutely keeping them at
arm's length. She was supremely unconscious of anything at all
remarkable in her behavior, and believed that they accepted her
excuses and apologies at their face value. She had no conception of
the fact that her tortured face, with tragedy looking newly out of her
eyes, kept them from their rest at night.

Sheila wrote to thank her for sending the trunks.

* * * * *

"My dear, _ma chere_, Miss Dear," she said. "_Merci beaucoup pour_ my
clothes and other beautiful things. I like them. _Je t'aime--je t'aime
toujours_. My father will not permit me to go back. _Comme_--how I
desire to see you! My father has been sick. He fell down or was hurt
in the street. There was blood--a great deal. Are they well--the
others? Tell Monsieur Dick I give him _tout mon coeur_. Come to see me
if it is _permit_. No more. You could write _peut-etre_. _Je
t'aime_."

"Yours,
"SHEILA."

* * * * *

Nancy read this letter, in the quaint childish hand, with a great wave
of dumb sickness creeping over her--a devastating, disintegrating
nausea of soul and body. The most significant fact in it, however,
that Collier Pratt had fallen down "or been hurt in the street," of
course escaped her entirely, except to stir her with a kind of dim
pity for his distress.

In one of her long night vigils Preston Eust