, "Sheila needs you. She
needs you to keep alive her love for me." And in the dream, he
answered, as he had really answered Mrs. Caldwell the day before,
"There is nothing I would not do for her." So vivid was all this that
when he opened his eyes and found Ted actually in the room, he was not
in the least surprised.

"You left your door unlocked," Ted explained apologetically, "and I
came on in. Mrs. Caldwell died in the night--and Sheila's gone to
pieces. She's been asking for you. Would you mind going to her for a
bit?"

"There's nothing I would not do for her!" replied Peter, in the words
of his dream. And for an instant he thought he still dreamed.

"That's awfully good of you. You look done up, Burnett. But if you're
equal to it, I'll be grateful to you."

As he gazed at Peter, whose face was gray still, though the morning
light was now golden, Ted added to himself, "Poor chap! He's growing
old." To him it would have been incredible that Peter's scars had been
won in youth's own great battle--the battle with love. A certain
complacency stole warmly through him then, ruddy and robust as he knew
himself to be, a complacency that led him to lay a kindly, solicitous
hand on the older man's shoulder; and so intent he was upon his
self-satisfied kindliness that he did not see Peter wince at the touch.

"You do look done up, Burnett. Maybe I ought not to ask you----"

But Peter cut him short. "I'd do anything for Sheila," he repeated.

After all, this was left to him, Peter reflected; it was left to him to
do things for Sheila. And perhaps he would find nothing she needed of
him impossible. The love that had been so dark with the dark and
secret hours could have its white vision, too.

CHAPTER XIV

Peter had felt that he could not be much with Sheila henceforth; that
neither his own heart nor conventional Shadyville's standards would
permit it. But Sheila herself ordained otherwise, and under the
circumstances of her bereavement, Peter could but obey her.

Never had Sheila been so lonely as in the weeks immediately following
Mrs. Caldwell's death. Whatever reserves of speech had existed between
the two in these latter years, there had been no reserve of feeling, of
comprehension. Close friends they had always been; and if Sheila was
alone in a shared life, so far as her marriage was concerned, she had
had a satisfying refuge in her grandmother's sympathetic companionship.
Now, with th