doesn't know what it means to go without the pretty
things that women long for. You wouldn't believe it, General, but when
I was a little girl, I used to stand in front of shop windows and
wonder if other girls really wore the slippers and fans and parasols.
And when I went to Dr. McKenzie's, and saw Jean in her silk dressing
gowns, and her pink slippers and her lace caps, she seemed to me like a
lady in a play. I've worn my uniforms since I took my nurse's
training, and before that I wore the uniform of an Orphans' Home. I--I
don't know why I am telling you all this--only it doesn't seem quite
fair, does it?"

He had all of an old man's sympathy for a lovely woman in distress. He
had all of any man's desire to play Cophetua.

"Look here," he said. "You get yourself a pink parasol and a fan and a
silk dress. I'd like to see you wear them."

She shook her head. "What should I do with things like that?" Her
voice had a note of wistfulness. "A woman in my position must be
careful."

"But I want you to have the things," he persisted.

"I shouldn't have a place to wear them," sadly. "No, you are very good
to offer them. But I mustn't."

The General slept after that. Hilda read under the lamp--a white cat
watched by a little old terrier on the stairs!

And now the big house was very still. There were lights in the halls
of the first and second floors. Bronson crouching in the darkness of
the third landing was glad of the company of the painted lady on the
stairs. He knew she would approve of what he was doing. For years he
had served her in such matters as this, saving her husband from
himself. When Derry was too small, too ignorant of evil, too innocent,
to be told things, it was to the old servant that she had come.

He remembered a certain night. She was young then and new to her task.
She and the General had been dining at one of the Legations. She was
in pale blue and very appealing. When Bronson had opened the door, she
had come in alone.

"Oh, the General, the General, Bronson," she had said. "We've got to
go after him."

She was shaking with the dread of it, and Bronson had said, "Hadn't you
better wait, ma'am?"

"I mustn't. We stopped at the hotel as we came by, and he said he
would run in and get a New York paper. And we waited, and we waited,
and he didn't come out again, and at last I sent McChesney in, and he
couldn't find him. And then I went and sat in the corridor, thinkin