ferred to it the evening after the theater, a week before I went
away. You called it a debt of honor. You laughed at the time, but you
warned me it was the hardest kind of debt because an obligation to a
friend kept one continually paying interest in a hundred small ways. You
said it was like selling yourself on a perpetual instalment plan. That
wasn't the first time you had spoken of it, but you seemed to feel the
pressure more that night and, afterwards, up there in the north, I got to
thinking it over. I blamed myself for not finding out the truth. I was
afraid the loan was Frederic Morganstein's." He paused and drew back a
step with a quick uplift of his aggressive chin. "Was it?" he asked.

"Yes." She drew erect and turned from the parapet to meet his look. "My
note came into his hands. But I see I must explain. It began in a yearly
subscription to the Orthopedic hospital; the one, you know, for little
deformed children. I was very interested when the movement started; I sang
at concerts, danced sometimes you remember, to help along the fund. And I
endowed a little bed. David always seemed just on the brink of riches in
those days, his letters were full of brilliant predictions, but when the
second annual payment fell due, I had to borrow of Elizabeth. She
suggested it. She herself was interested deeper, financially, than I. All
the people we knew, who ever gave to charity, were eager to help the
Orthopedic; the ladies at the head were our personal friends; the best
surgeons were giving their services and time. I hadn't the courage to have
my subscription discontinued so soon, and I expected to cancel the debt
when I heard again from David. But the next spring it was the same; I
borrowed again from Elizabeth. After that, when she wanted to apply the
sum to the hospital building fund, Mrs. Feversham advanced the money, and
I gave my note. My bed, then, was given to a little, motherless boy. He
had the dearest, most trusting smile and great, dark eyes; the kind that
talk to you. And his father had deserted him. That seems incredible; that
a man can leave his own child, crippled, ill, unprovided for; but it does
happen, sometimes." She paused to steady her voice and looked off again
from the parapet. "The surgeons were greatly interested in the case," she
went on. "They were about to perform an unusual operation. All his future
depended on it. So--I let my subscription run on; so much could happen in
a year. The operati