nd
known--I want you always to see and know them."

"If any one could make me see and know them it is you, Diana."

They were silent after that, and presently she said that she must go.

Anthony took her home himself in his little car, and when at last they
reached her door he said, gratefully: "What should I do without your
friendship? At least I have that, Diana."

She hesitated. "It must be a long distance friendship, Anthony."

"What do you mean?"

"I am going away."

"Oh, why should you? We are self-controlled man and woman, not impulsive
boy and girl. We have set our feet on a hard path. Why shouldn't we
cheer each other along the way?"

"I'm afraid it wouldn't be fair--to Bettina."

"Why not? My friendship for you need deprive her of nothing."

"I must think it over."

"Don't think. Don't analyze at all. Just stay." A grave smile lighted
his face. "I'm not making this as a selfish proposition, Diana. I shan't
expect to absorb you, to take you away from other friendships. But I
want you to be near me at such times as this; when my world was without
a ray of light, you illumined it with your friendly taper."

Diana climbed the steps in an uplifted mood. This, then, was the
solution of the difficulty. She had been making high tragedy of the
situation when it might be solved sensibly. She remembered a quotation
which she had copied in her school note-book: "My friend is one with
whom I can associate my choicest thought." Her friendship with Anthony
could go on as before. She could be an inspirational force in his life.
Had she the right to refuse?

She found Bettina and Sophie sitting up for her.

"Oh, you're back so soon," Bettina said. "Is she better? Is that little
girl better?"

Diana returned to realities with a shock. How selfish she had been! She
had almost forgotten that poor little soul at the hospital.

"No, she isn't better." She shrank from voicing the truth. "They
couldn't save her, and before I reached there she was--gone."

"_Dead!_" Bettina shuddered. "Oh, I think such things are dreadful; I
don't see how Anthony stands it."

"It has made him very miserable," Diana told her; "he hates to lose a
case."

"Then why does he do it?" Bettina demanded. "Why doesn't he give up his
surgery? He has enough to do with his freaks at the sanatorium, and his
sick people who need medicine."

"Would you have a man give up a thing which he can do better than other
men?"

Sophie, looking on,