drifting from one to another. She heard nothing
more now. He was the only one who had really loved her up here, except
Lois, who loved her now. Dosia had slipped into her new position of
sister and helper as if she had always filled it. She was not an
outsider any more; she _belonged_.

As she sat bending over Lois now, her attitude was instinct with
something high-mindedly lovely. The Dosia who had only wanted to be
loved now felt--after a year of trial and conflict with death--that she
only wanted, and with the same youthful intensity, to be very good, even
though it seemed sometimes to that same youthfulness a strange and
tragic thing that it should be all she wanted. The mysterious,
fathomless depression of youth, as of something akin to unknown primal
depths of loneliness, sometimes laid its chill hand on her heart; but
when Dosia "said her prayers," she got, child-fashion, very near to a
Some One who brought her an intimate tender comfort of resurrection and
of life.

"I don't think Justin seems well," she repeated, Lois, looking up at her
with calmly expressionless eyes from her pillow, having taken no notice
of the remark. "He has changed, I think, even in the ten days since I
came."

"He has something on his mind," assented Lois, with a note of languor in
her voice. "I suppose it's the business. I made up my mind to ask him
about it to-night. He has been out every evening lately, and I hardly
see him at all before he goes off in the morning, now that I don't get
down to breakfast."

"Oh, he gave me a message for you this morning," cried Dosia, with
compunction at having so far forgotten it. "He said that Mr. Larue had
come in to inquire about you yesterday. He is going to send you a basket
of strawberries and roses from his place at Collingswood to-morrow."

"Eugene Larue!" Lois' lips relaxed into a pleased curve; a slight color
touched her cheek. "That was very nice of him. He knew I'd like to look
forward to getting them. Strawberries and roses!"

"I met Mr. Girard in the street to-day; he asked after you," continued
Dosia, with the feeling that if she spoke of him she might get that
tiresome, insistent image of him from before her eyes.

"Bailey Girard? Yes; he has a room at the Snows'. Billy's out West."

"So I've heard," said Dosia.

It was one of the strange and melancholy ironies of life that the man of
all others whom she had desired to meet should be thrown daily in her
pathway now, after th