d in the doorway the tall figure of Dr. Pettit. And
with him, wonder of wonders! the slight form, the beautiful, wistful,
tired face of Katharine Sonnot, whose ambition to go to France as a
nurse I had been able to further.

"My dear, what has happened to you?" Katherine exclaimed solicitously.
"I received no answer to my letter saying I was coming home, so when I
reached New York, I went to Dr. Pettit. He thought you were at Marvin,
but when he telephoned out there, Katie said you had had a terrible
accident, and that you had left Marvin. I was not quite sure, for
she was half crying over the telephone, but I thought she said 'for
keeps.'"

She stopped and looked at me with a hint of fright in her manner. I
knew she wanted to ask about Dicky's absence, and did not dare to do
so.

"Everything you heard is true, Katherine," I returned, a trifle
unsteadily, as her arms went around me warmly. I was more than a
trifle upset by her coming, for associated with her were memories of
my brother-cousin, Jack Bickett, who had gone to the great war when
he had learned that I was married, and of whose death "somewhere in
France," I had heard through Mrs. Stewart.

"Where is your husband?" Dr. Pettit demanded, and there was that in
his voice which told me that he was putting an iron hand upon his own
emotions.

Now the stock answer which Lillian and I returned to all inquiries of
this sort was "In San Francisco upon a big commission." It was upon
my lips, but some influence stronger than my will made me change it to
the truth.

"I do not know," I said faintly. "He left the city very abruptly
several weeks ago, sending word in a letter to Mrs. Underwood that he
would never see me again. It is a terrible mystery."

Dr. Pettit muttered something that I knew was a bitter anathema
against Dicky, and then folded his arms tightly across his chest, as
if he would keep in any further comment. But I had no time to pay
any attention to him, for Katherine Sonnot was uttering words that
bewildered and terrified me.

"Oh! how terrible!" she said. "Jack will be so grieved. He had so
hoped to find you happy together when he came home."

Was the girl's brain turned, I wondered, because of grief for my
brother-cousin's death? I had known before I secured the chance for
her to go to France that she was romantically interested in the man
who had been her brother's comrade, although she had never seen
him. And from Jack's letters to Mrs. Ste