passage of a younger one.

She realized her own selfishness in her demand for self-expression. What
had she expressed while others fixed their faithful eyes on duty?

Nancy shone high and clear in those dull hospital days. Nancy who
demanded so little, but who trod, with divine patience, the truer
course.

"Well, Nan shall have her own!" Joan thought, and gripped her thin hands
under the bedclothes. "I'll strive for Nan as I never have for myself."

Out of the debris of the feverish past Joan held alone to Patricia.
Strange, it seemed to her, that the dead girl should have grown to such
importance, but so it was. Patricia was the real, the sacred thing, and
she planned the home-bringing of the dear body and the placing of it on
the hillside in The Gap.

And through the convalescing days Cameron had his place, like a fixed
star.

Often worn by the day's silent remorse and earnest promise as to the
future, Joan looked to that hour when Cameron, calm, serious but
cheerful, sat by her bedside--a strong link between the folly of the
past and the hope of the times on ahead.

Vaguely she recalled the blurred weeks of fever and pain, and always his
quiet voice and cool touch held part.

"And to think," Joan could but smile, "that he does not know me--but I
know who he is just as I knew about----" She could not name Raymond
yet--she could only think kindly of him when she held to the days before
that last, tragic night.

And Cameron, meanwhile, was drawing wrong conclusions. Not that they
changed his personal attitude toward the girl whose life he had helped
save. To him she was a human creature whose faith in her future must be
restored as her body was in the process of being. Cameron believed in
stepping-stones and was utterly opposed to waste of any kind.

"She's paid her debt and his, too, I wager," Cameron often muttered;
"that's the devil of it all, and she'll go on and perhaps down--if she
doesn't get a start up. If I could only get hold of her folks--it would
help!"

But Joan held him at bay when he ventured on that line.

"When I am quite well," she said with gentle dignity, "I am going home
and do my own explaining."

"Are you considering--them?" Cameron frowned at her.

"I am--as I never have before!"

To this silence was the only reply.

Presently Joan made her first big stride toward complete recovery. She
forsook her bed during the day and, in pink gown and dainty
cap--procured by Miss Brown--s