k, exhausted. Suddenly a thought smote him. He beckoned. She
approached. "My heart--is it safe?" he whispered.

"Your heart?"

"At the end of my watch-chain."

"Quite safe."

"Could I have it near me?"

"Of course."

Paul closed his eyes contentedly. With his talisman in his hand, all
would be well. For the present he need take thought of nothing. His
presence in the beautiful room being explained, there was an end of the
perplexity of his semi-delirium. Of payment for evident devoted service
there could be no question. Time enough when he grew well and able to
fare forth again, to consider the immediate future. He was too weak to
lift his head, and something inside him hurt like the devil when he
moved. Why worry about outer and unimportant matters? The long days of
pain and illness slipped gradually away. Miss Winwood sat by his
bedside and talked; but not until he was much stronger did she question
him as to his antecedents. The Archdeacon had gone away after a week's
visit without being able to hold any converse with Paul; Colonel
Winwood was still at Contrexeville, whence he wrote sceptically of the
rare bird whom Ursula had discovered; and Ursula was alone in the
house, save for a girl friend who had no traffic with the sick-chamber.
She had, therefore, much leisure to devote to Paul. Her brother's
scepticism most naturally strengthened her belief in him. He was her
discovery. He grew almost to be her invention. Just consider. Here was
a young Greek god--everyone who had a bowing acquaintance with ancient
sculpture immediately likened Paul to a Greek god, and Ursula was not
so far different from her cultured fellow mortals as to liken him to
anything else--here was a young Phoebus Apollo, all the more Olympian
because of his freedom from earthly ties, fallen straight from the
clouds. He had fallen at her feet. His beauty had stirred her. His
starlike loneliness had touched her heart. His swift intelligence,
growing more manifest each day as he grew stronger, moved her
admiration. He had, too, she realized, a sunny and sensuous nature,
alive to beauty--even the beauty of the trivial things in his sickroom.
He had an odd, poetical trick of phrase. He was a paragon of young
Greek gods. She had discovered him; and women don't discover even
mortal paragons every day in the week. Also, she was a woman of
forty-three, which, after all, is not wrinkled and withered eld; and
she was not a soured woman; she radiated