ather spent the night in South Tredegar; and a little while ago he
telephoned for Mr. Norman--from the iron-works, I think." She had moved
away again, and her hand was on the door-knob.

He raised himself on one elbow.

"You are in a desperate hurry, aren't you?" he gritted; though the
teeth-grinding was from the pain it cost him to move. "Would you mind
handing me that desk telephone before you go?"

She came back and tried it, but the wired cord was not long enough to
reach to the bed.

"If you wish to speak to some one, perhaps I could do it for you," she
suggested, quite in the trained-nurse tone.

His smile was a mere grimace of torture.

"If you could stretch your good-will to--to my mother--that far," he
said. "Please call my office--number five-twenty-six G--and ask for Mr.
Norman."

She complied, but with only a strange young-woman stenographer at the
other end of the wire, a word of explanation was necessary. "This is
Miss Dabney, at Woodlawn. Mr. Gordon is better, and he wishes to
say--what did you want to say?" she asked, turning to him.

"Just ask what's going on; if it's Norman you've got, he'll know," said
Tom, sinking back on the pillows.

What the stenographer had to say took some little time, and Ardea's
color came and went in hot flashes and her eyes grew large and
thoughtful as she listened. When she put the ear-piece down and spoke to
the sick man, her tone was kinder.

"There is an important business meeting going on over at the furnace
office, and Mr. Norman is there with your father," she said. "The
stenographer wants me to ask you about some papers Mr. Norman thinks you
may have, and--"

She stopped in deference to the yellow pallor that was creeping like a
curious mask over the face of the man in the bed. Through all the strain
of the last twenty hours she had held herself well in hand, doing for
him only what she might have done for a sick and suffering stranger. But
there were limits beyond which love refused to be driven.

"Tom!" she gasped, rising quickly to go to him.

"Wait," he muttered; "let me pull myself together. The
papers--are--in--"

He seemed about to relapse into unconsciousness, and she hastily poured
out a spoonful of the stimulating medicine left by Doctor Williams and
gave it to him. It strangled him, and she slipped her hand under the
pillow and raised his head. It was the nearness of her that revived him.

"I--I'm weaker than a girl," he whispered. "Vinc