w lovely it all was! How
beautiful life was! If one did one's best by life, it did its best too.
How steady K.'s eyes were! She saw the flicker of the match across the
street, and knew what it meant. Once she would have thought that that
was funny; now it seemed very touching to her.

Katie had heard the car, and now she came heavily along the hall. "A
woman left this for Mr. K.," she said. "If you think it's a begging
letter, you'd better keep it until he's bought his new suit to-morrow.
Almost any moment he's likely to bust out."

But it was not a begging letter. K. read it in the hall, with Sidney's
shining eyes on him. It began abruptly:--

"I'm going to Africa with one of my cousins. She is a medical
missionary. Perhaps I can work things out there. It is a bad station on
the West Coast. I am not going because I feel any call to the work, but
because I do not know what else to do.

"You were kind to me the other day. I believe, if I had told you then,
you would still have been kind. I tried to tell you, but I was so
terribly afraid.

"If I caused death, I did not mean to. You will think that no excuse,
but it is true. In the hospital, when I changed the bottles on Miss
Page's medicine-tray, I did not care much what happened. But it was
different with you.

"You dismissed me, you remember. I had been careless about a sponge
count. I made up my mind to get back at you. It seemed hopeless--you
were so secure. For two or three days I tried to think of some way to
hurt you. I almost gave up. Then I found the way.

"You remember the packets of gauze sponges we made and used in the
operating-room? There were twelve to each package. When we counted them
as we got them out, we counted by packages. On the night before I left,
I went to the operating-room and added one sponge every here and there.
Out of every dozen packets, perhaps, I fixed one that had thirteen. The
next day I went away.

"Then I was terrified. What if somebody died? I had meant to give you
trouble, so you would have to do certain cases a second time. I swear
that was all. I was so frightened that I went down sick over it. When
I got better, I heard you had lost a case and the cause was being
whispered about. I almost died of terror.

"I tried to get back into the hospital one night. I went up the
fire-escape, but the windows were locked. Then I left the city. I
couldn't stand it. I was afraid to read a newspaper.

"I am not going to sign this l