"Take these, Betty." Diana thrust the lilacs into the girl's arms.
"Perhaps you'd better go back and sit in the car with Justin and
Sophie, or you can wait in the reception room. I won't be long."

But she was longer than she had anticipated. The seconds lengthened into
minutes, and the minutes in quarters and into half hours. Justin came in
once and found Bettina sitting stiffly on the edge of a chair with the
flowers in her arms.

"Come out and we'll take a spin across the causeway, while we wait," he
said.

Bettina shook her head. "Diana said she wouldn't be long. I don't see
what's keeping her."

"There's that operation this morning, you know, on the girl with
appendicitis. And Diana has always been a great help with Anthony's
patients. He told me that when she went to Europe her loss was felt
deeply here----"

"But the girl--with appendicitis?" Bettina's face was white. "Is she
afraid----?"

"Yes."

"Oh, I should be afraid. I--I don't see how Anthony can do it."

"Do what?"

"Operate on such a little scared thing----" She was shivering.

"You mustn't stay here," Justin insisted; "you'll get nervous, you
know, and all that; you really mustn't stay--you weren't made to have
your mind on such things."

"But Diana's mind is on them."

"Diana is--different."

That Diana was different was being demonstrated at that very moment in
an upper room, where a little white slip of a girl had welcomed her with
a wailing cry--"I'm afraid."

"My dear," Diana bent over the bed, "there's nothing to be afraid of,
not with your doctor."

"But--if I should die."

"You're not going to die."

"But how do you know?"

"Because your good doctor has said so--and he knows----"

"But sometimes people do--die."

Diana signed to the nurse to go out, and then she knelt by the bed.

"Dear child," she said, softly, "life is such a short journey for all of
us, and beyond is a wonder land. When I was a little girl I used to wish
that I might die, and I thought that my lonely little soul might sail
and sail in a silver boat until I came to the shores of that far country
where I should find my father and mother waiting. I was such a dreary
little orphan, and I wanted love. And I knew that in that country Love
waited for me--as it is waiting for you. Would it be so hard to go after
all the pain, if Love willed it so?"

"I hadn't thought of it that way."

"Then think of it now. But most of all think of life, and of what