dable misery of life. But on that sunny afternoon when Orlando
Guise's voice first sounded in her ears, and his eyes looked into hers
as, pale and ill, she gazed at him from the window, a revelation came to
her of what the three years of life with Joel Mazarine had really been.
From that moment until she heard the pioneer's wagon, escorted by her
husband, bringing the unconscious Orlando Guise to her door, she had
lived in a dream which seemed like a year of time to her.

Since the early morning of that very day, when Joel had leaned over her
bed and asked her in his slow, grinding voice how she was, she had lived
more than in all the past nineteen years of her life. The Young Doctor
had come and gone, amazed at first, but presently with a look of
apprehension in his eyes. There was not much trace of yesterday's
illness in the alert, eager girl-wife, who twenty-four hours before had
been really nearer to the end of all things than her aged husband. The
Young Doctor knew all too well what the curious, throbbing light in her
eyes meant. He knew that the gay and splendid Orlando Guise had made the
sun for this prismatic radiance, and that the story of her life, which
Louise had wished to tell him yesterday, would never now be told--for
she would have no desire to tell it. The old vague misery, the ancient
veiled torture, was behind her, and she was presently to suffer a new
torture--but also a joy for which men and women have borne unspeakable
things. No, Louise would never tell him the story of her life, because
now she knew it was a thing which must not be told. Her mind understood
things it had never known before. To be wise is to be secret, and she
had learned some wisdom; and the Young Doctor wondered if the greater
wisdom she must learn would be drunk from the cup of folly. Before he
left her he had said to her with meaning in his voice:

"My dear young madam, your recovery is too rapid. It is not a cure:
it is a miracle; and miracles are not easily understood. We must,
therefore, make them understood; and so you will take regularly three
times a day the powerful tonic I will give you."

She was about to interrupt him, but he waved a hand reprovingly and
added with kindly irony:

"Yes, we both know you don't need a tonic out of a bottle; but it's
just as well other people should think that the tonic bringing back
the colour to your cheeks comes out of a bottle and not out of a health
resort, called Slow Down Ranch