ner she and Ridgeley and Christopher had
walked down to the grove of birches. There had been a new moon, and she
and Ridgeley had sat on the stone bench with Christopher at their feet.
She had leaned her head against her husband's shoulder, and he had put
his arm about her in the dark and had drawn her to him. He was rarely
demonstrative, and his tenderness had to-night for some reason hurt her.
She had learned to do without it.

She had talked very little, but Christopher had talked a great deal. She
had been content to listen. He really told such wonderful things--he
gave her to-night the full story of her silver beads, and how they had
been filched from an ancient temple--and he had bought them from the
thief. "Until I saw you wear them, I always had a feeling that they
ought to go back to the temple--to the god who had perhaps worn them for
a thousand years. If I had known which god, I might have carried them
back. But the thief wouldn't tell me."

"It would have done no good to carry them back," Ridgeley had said, "and
they are nice for Anne." His big hand had patted his wife's shoulder.

"Oh," Christopher had been eager, "I want you to hear those temple bells
some day, Anne. Why won't you take her, Dunbar? Next winter--drop your
work, and we'll all go--"

"I've a fat chance of going."

"Haven't you made money enough?"

"It isn't money. You know that. But my patients would set up a howl--"

"Let 'em howl. You've got a life of your own to live, and so has Anne."

Dunbar had hesitated for a moment--then, "Anne's better off here."

Anne, thinking of these things as she got out of her dinner dress and
into a sheer negligee of lace and faint blue, wondered why Ridgeley
should think she was better off. She wanted to see the things of which
Christopher had told her--to hear the temple bells in the dusk--the beat
of the tom-tom on white nights.

She stood at the window looking out at the moon. She decided that she
could not sleep. She would go down and get a book that she had left on
the table. The men were out-of-doors, on the porch; she heard the murmur
of their voices.

The voices were distinct as she stood in the library, and Christopher's
words came to her, "What's the matter with Anne?"

Then her husband's technical explanation, the scientific name which
meant nothing to her, then the crashing climax, "She can't get well."

She gave a quick cry, and when the men got into the room, she was
crumpled up o