telegram from Charlotte. Loring was now
sitting up in his bedroom. Griffeth said that on the morrow he could go
out. Sophy gave orders to have some necessary things packed. She had
decided to leave the next night by boat. How was she to see Amaldi? More
and more she felt that she must say farewell to him. People had been
coming to inquire about Loring. She had not seen any callers since his
illness, but to-day she decided to receive them--and in the morning she
sent a note to Amaldi. She told him that she had to leave suddenly for
an indefinite period. "I am seeing my friends to-day," she wrote. "If
you will come about half-past six this afternoon we can have a quiet
talk."

Then she took Charlotte's telegram in her hand and went to Loring's
rooms.

XXXVI

She knocked at his dressing-room door, and Miss Webb, the trained nurse,
opened it. When she saw Sophy, she stepped aside, smiling, for her to
enter.

"My patient's doing _fine_, to-day," she said. "He's eat half a chicken,
and wants more. So I'm giving him the other half."

Sophy showed her the telegram, and asked if she thought Mr. Loring were
well enough to be consulted about a matter of importance. Something that
might perhaps agitate him. Miss Webb asked _how_ important it was. Sophy
replied that it was of the utmost importance. Miss Webb considered a
moment, then said:

"Well, if he's got to know it, morning's the best time. I guess he's
well enough not to have important things kept from him."

She held open the door and Sophy went through the dressing-room to
Loring's bedroom. Miss Webb opened that door also and called out in the
tone of artificial good cheer with which one addresses convalescents:

"Here's Mrs. Loring come to see you eat that other half, Mr. Loring!"

She withdrew, closing the door, and Sophy went over to where Loring sat
in an armchair with a tray on a little table before him.

He had swallowed a mouthful of broiled fowl with undue haste when he
heard Miss Webb's announcement, and now as Sophy advanced he gulped some
White Rock, partly to clear his throat, partly to cover his
embarrassment.

His face, pale and chastened by his recent attack, went to her heart.
There was in it something so boyish, so irresponsible. That mother-pity
welled in her. What she had determined on was going to hurt more even
than she had dreaded. Yet she knew that she would go through with it to
the end, no matter how it hurt. The pain of freeing