must despise.

But was that the supreme altruism? What had it cost him, after all, but
her friendship? Perhaps he did not regard that as so heavy a price to
pay.

Sharlee turned her face to the wall. In the darkness, she felt the color
rising at her throat and sweeping softly but resistlessly upward. And
she found herself feverishly clinging to all that her little Doctor had
said, and looked, in all their meetings which, remembered now, gave her
the right to think that their parting had been hard for him, too.

Yet it was not upon their parting that her mind busied itself most, but
upon thoughts of their remeeting. The relations which she had thought to
exist between them had, it was clear, been violently reversed. The one
point now was for her to meet the topsy-turveyed situation as swiftly,
as generously, and as humbly as was possible.

If she had been a man, she would have gone to him at once, hunted him up
this very night, and told him in the most groveling language at her
command, how infinitely sorry and ashamed she was. Lying wide-eyed in
her little white bed, she composed a number of long speeches that she,
as a man, would have made to him; embarrassing speeches which he, as a
man, or any other man that ever lived, would never have endured for a
moment. But she was not a man, she was a girl; and girls were not
allowed to go to men, and frankly and honestly say what was in their
hearts. She was not in the least likely to meet him by accident; the
telephone was unthinkable. There remained only to write him a letter.

Yes, but what to say in the letter? There was the critical and crucial
question. No matter how artful and cajoling an apology she wrote, she
knew exactly how he would treat it. He would write a civil, formal
reply, assuring her that her apology was accepted, and there the matter
would stand forever. For she had put herself terribly in the wrong; she
had betrayed a damning weakness; it was extremely probable that he would
never care to resume friendship with one who had proved herself so
hatefully mistrustful. Then, too, he was evidently very angry with her
about the money. Only by meeting for a long, frank talk could she ever
hope to make things right again; but not to save her life could she
think of any form of letter which would bring such a meeting to pass.

Pondering the question, she fell asleep. All next day, whenever she had
a minute and sometimes when she did not, she pondered it, and t