ophecy was missing.

He took my hand in his own steady, reassuring clasp. Then he
began to talk. Half an hour sped away while we discussed New
York--books--music--theatres--everything and anything but Dawn O'Hara.
I learned later that as we chatted he was getting his story, bit by bit,
from every twitch of the eyelids, from every gesture of the hands that
had grown too thin to wear the hateful ring; from every motion of the
lips; from the color of my nails; from each convulsive muscle; from
every shadow, and wrinkle and curve and line of my face.

Suddenly he asked: "Are you making the proper effort to get well? You
try to conquer those jumping nerfs, yes?"

I glared at him. "Try! I do everything. I'd eat woolly worms if I
thought they might benefit me. If ever a girl has minded her big sister
and her doctor, that girl is I. I've eaten everything from pate de foie
gras to raw beef, and I've drunk everything from blood to champagne."

"Eggs?" queried Von Gerhard, as though making a happy suggestion.

"Eggs!" I snorted. "Eggs! Thousands of 'em! Eggs hard and soft boiled,
poached and fried, scrambled and shirred, eggs in beer and egg-noggs,
egg lemonades and egg orangeades, eggs in wine and eggs in milk, and
eggs au naturel. I've lapped up iron-and-wine, and whole rivers of milk,
and I've devoured rare porterhouse and roast beef day after day for
weeks. So! Eggs!"

"Mein Himmel!" ejaculated he, fervently, "And you still live!" A
suspicion of a smile dawned in his eyes. I wondered if he ever laughed.
I would experiment.

"Don't breathe it to a soul," I whispered, tragically, "but eggs, and
eggs alone, are turning my love for my sister into bitterest hate. She
stalks me the whole day long, forcing egg mixtures down my unwilling
throat. She bullies me. I daren't put out my hand suddenly without
knocking over liquid refreshment in some form, but certainly with an egg
lurking in its depths. I am so expert that I can tell an egg orangeade
from an egg lemonade at a distance of twenty yards, with my left hand
tied behind me, and one eye shut, and my feet in a sack."

"You can laugh, eh? Well, that iss good," commented the grave and
unsmiling one.

"Sure," answered I, made more flippant by his solemnity. "Surely I can
laugh. For what else was my father Irish? Dad used to say that a sense
of humor was like a shillaly--an iligent thing to have around handy,
especially when the joke's on you."

The ghost of a twinkle appea