Bridgie quaintly.
"That is, if I were quite certain about it, but I never believe in
disagreeable things until they have really happened. Hope for the best
as long as you can. You have clever doctors and nurses, and you will
have a better chance if you keep up your spirits."

Sylvia shook her head hopelessly.

"It's easy to be philosophic for someone else. I could preach
beautifully to you, Bridgie, if you were lying here instead of me, but
the suspense is so hard to bear! I feel as if I could not live through
another week like the last. Have you ever known what it was to drag
through the days with a nightmare of dread growing bigger and bigger,
nearer and nearer, to look ahead and see your life robbed of the things
you care for most, to hope against hope, while all the time your heart
is sinking down--down--"

"Down--until it is just one great big ache clouding out the whole world?
Yes, I know!" said Bridgie quietly. "I have never had a bad illness,
but my trouble came to me in a different way, Sylvia, and my time of
suspense was not days, but weeks and months, I might almost say years,
except that even my hopes died out before that time arrived!"

The two girls looked at each other intently, and the blank depression on
the invalid's face gave place to one of anxious sympathy.

"You mean, of course, that it was a mental trouble. Could you tell me
about it, Bridgie, do you think? I don't want to force your confidence,
but I am so interested in you, and it would do me good to be sorry for
someone beside myself. Was it a--love affair?"

"I cared for him, but I am afraid he could not have liked me very much,"
said Bridgie sadly. "I have never spoken of him except to Esmeralda and
one other person, but I don't mind telling you, dear, if it will be the
least bit of help to you now. We seem to know each other so well that
it seems absurd to think we had not met, two months ago.

"It was just someone I met one time when I was visiting, and when he was
ordered abroad he asked if he might write while he was away. I was very
happy about it, for I had never seen anyone I liked so much, and we
wrote to each other regularly for over a year. They were not love-
letters; just quite ordinary, sensible, telling-the-news, but there was
always one little sentence in his which seemed to say more than the
words, and to tell me that he cared a great deal. If a stranger had
read it, he would not have understood, but I kne