rm, through the shaky sobs--"until there is
some one to take my place."

"I'll telegraph for some one. You shan't see her again. But I will see
her at once."

Then the woman's training asserted itself. She pulled herself together,
with a little shake of self-disgust. "You'll do nothing of the sort.
I'll attend to her until I go. It has been a long strain, and, contrary
to custom, I've had no time off. I'll telegraph to the Registry myself.
And if I can't manage until then, I'll resign my profession." She spoke
with sturdy shame.

"That's better." Withrow approved her. "I'm awfully obliged. But
honestly, she has got to know. I can't stand it, skulking round, much
longer. And no matter what happens to the whole boiling, I'm not going
to leave without seeing her."

"I'll tell her." The nurse rose and walked to the barn-door like a
heroine. "But you must stay here until I come for you."

"I promise. Only you must come. I give you half an hour."

"I don't need half an hour, thank you." She had recovered her
professional crispness. In the wide door she stopped. "It's a pity," she
said irrelevantly, "that she can't see how lovely this is." Then she
started for the house.

"I believe you," muttered Withrow under his breath.

In five minutes the nurse came back, breathless, half-running. Arnold
got up from the chopping-block, startled. He believed for an instant (as
he has since told me) that it was "all over." With her hand on her
beating heart the woman panted out her words:

"She has come downstairs in a wrapper. She hasn't been down for weeks.
And she has found your hepaticas."

"Oh, hell!" Withrow was honestly disgusted. He had never meant to insult
Kathleen Somers with hepaticas. "Is it safe to leave her alone with
them?" He hardly knew what he was saying. But it shows to what a pass
Kathleen Somers had come that he could be frightened at the notion of
her being left alone with a bunch of hepaticas.

"She's all right, I think. She seemed to like them."

"Oh, Lord!" Withrow's brain was spinning. "Here, I'll go. If she can
stand those beastly flowers, she can stand me."

"No, she can't." The nurse had recovered her breath now. "I'll go back
and tell her, very quietly. If she could get down-stairs, she can stand
it, I think. But I'll be very careful. You come in ten minutes. If she
isn't fit, I'll have got her back to bed by that time."

She disappeared, and Withrow, his back to the view, counted out the
min