and made two trips to
the station unnecessary. It was fine to see the Captain put his machine
at the disposal of his hostess. "I told Lucius to wait," he boasted, "I
thought we might need him."

Dr. Brent succeeded at last in drawing his pretty guest into
conversation by remarking on the Captain's color. "He's feeding
improperly, if you don't mind my saying so. He's putting on weight, he
tells me, but feels cold and nerveless. Cut him down on starchy foods.
How long is it since he was hurt?"

"About eight months."

"Must have been a tearing beast of an accident to wing a man of his
frame."

"It was. Tore his whole side to pieces."

"Who put him together--Steele, of Denver?"

"No, a man in Cripple."

"Sure he was the right man?"

"He was the best I could get."

"You arouse my professional egotism. I'd like to examine the Captain if
you don't object--not for any fee, you understand. But a fellow of his
build and years--he tells me he's only forty-five--"

"Only forty-five," thought the girl. "What strange ideas these older
people have! And Ben was twenty-six." Just what the doctor said
afterwards she didn't hear, for she was thinking of the swift, wide arc
of change through which her mind had swung from the time when Marshall
Haney first came to Sibley--so grand of stride, so erect, so powerful.
He, too, seemed young then; now he was old--old and feeble--a man to be
advised, protected, humored. She dimly understood, too, that
corresponding change had come to her; that she was far away from the
girl who had stood behind the counter defending herself against the
love-making of the bummers and drummers among her patrons--and yet she
was the same, after all. "I've not changed as much as he has," was her
conclusion. And she enjoyed the gayety and beauty of her companions, but
she said little to express it.

The play that night appalled her by its fury of passion, its mockery of
woman, its cynical disbelief in man. With startling abruptness and in
most colloquial method it delineated the beginning of a young wife's
wrong-doing, and when the lover caught the innocent, ensnared woman to
his bosom a flaming sword seemed to have been plunged into Bertha's own
breast. She quivered and flushed. And when the actress displayed the
awakened conscience of the erring one, putting into words as well as
into facial expression her feeling of guilt and remorse, the girl-wife
in the box shrank and whitened, her big eyes fixed up