don for speaking of that to you. But, Gerard," he
bent to grasp a lever, "I'd take what you got last year, I'd consent to
be picked up dead from under my car to-morrow, if I could that way buy
one hour to stand clean before you and Jack Rupert. That's all--don't
think I want to flinch, please. If you will go on in, I'll put this
machine away and be back to dinner in fifteen minutes. I see Rupert
coming to help me, now. We're starved to death and some tired. By the
way, George shouted over to me that he would be in as soon as he got the
Duplex canned for the night, and to order a few dozen eggs and a couple
of hams fried for him. Would you attend to it on your way in?"

"I surely would," Gerard answered, the great gentleness of his tone
mating oddly with the light words. "What do you want ordered for
yourself?"

"Anything, and plenty of it."

Gerard did not smile as he went into the building. He too would have
given much to spare Corrie Rose the memory of that October morning's
fault. From all punishment except that memory he had sheltered him,
further aid no one could give. But because he loved Corrie, he climbed
the hotel stairs in slow abstraction and failed to perceive the
limousine that came up before the Mercury Titan, and stopped.

He was standing by a table in the empty parlor of the hotel, when the
door opened, and closed. Thinking some other guest had entered, he did
not turn from the letters he was reading, nor was there any further
movement or demand upon his attention. That which slowly invaded his
consciousness was a summons more delicate than sound, a faint,
distinctive flower-fragrance that proclaimed one individual presence.
Flavia Rose was in the room; he knew it before he swung around and saw
her standing there.

The shock that leaped along his pulses was less of hope than of renewed
pain.

"Miss Rose!" he exclaimed.

She moved a little forward. Against her dark velvet gown, under her wide
velvet hat, her soft, earnest face showed whitely lustrous and
irradiated, her beautiful eyes dwelt on his.

"I never knew," she said, her clear voice like rippled water. "Your
letter, the night before you went away, never came to me. I never knew
you had sent for me, until last month."

The movement that brought Gerard across the room was as nakedly
passionate as the incoherent simplicity of her speech.

"You never knew? Flavia, you would have come?"

"I would have come; I wanted to come long before, w