tell you what the doctor told me," Beatrice replied slowly.
"He said that, while his eyes were badly overstrained, the seat of the
trouble was mental. 'He is worrying,' he told me. 'Remove the cause
of that and he has a chance.'"

"So you have come to me for that?"

"It seems like fate," said Peter's sister, with something of awe in her
voice. "When, little by little, Peter told me of his love, I thought
of only one thing: of finding you. I wanted to cable you, because I--I
thought you would come if you knew. But Peter would not allow that.
He made me promise not to do that. Then, as he grew stronger, and the
doctor told us that perhaps an ocean voyage would help him, I wanted to
bring him to you. He would not allow that either. He thought you were
in Paris, and insisted that we take the Mediterranean route. Then--we
happen upon you outside the hotel we chose by chance! Does n't it seem
as if back of such a thing as that there must be something we don't
understand; something higher than just what we may think right or
wrong?"

"No, no; that's impossible," exclaimed Marjory.

"Why?"

"Because then we'd have to believe everything that happened was right.
And it is n't."

"Was our coming here not right?"

Marjory did not answer.

"If you could have seen the hope in Peter's face when I left him!"

"He does n't know!" choked Marjory.

"He knows you are here, and that is all he needs to know," answered
Beatrice.

"If it were only as simple as that."

The younger girl rose and, moving to the other's side, placed an arm
over the drooping shoulders.

"Marjory dear," she said. "I feel to-night more like Peter than
myself. I have listened so many hours in the dark as he talked about
you. He--he has given me a new idea of love. I'd always thought of
love in a--a sort of fairy-book way. I did n't think of it as having
much to do with everyday life. I supposed that some time a knight
would come along on horseback--if ever he came--and take me off on a
long holiday."

Marjory gave a start. The girl was smoothing her hair.

"It would always be May-time," she went on, "and we'd have nothing to
do but gather posies in the sunshine. We'd laugh and sing, and there'd
be no care and no worries. Did you ever think of love that way?"

"Yes."

The girl spoke more slowly now, as if anxious to be quite accurate:--

"But Peter seemed to think of other things. When we talked of you it
was as if he wanted