Withrow waked into a world of beauty. He walked for an hour before
breakfast, through woods all blurred with buds, down vistas brushed with
faint color. But he would have given the spring and all springs to come
for Kathleen Somers, and the bitter kernel of it was that he knew it. He
was sharp-faced and sad (I know how he looked) when he came back, with a
bunch of hepaticas, to breakfast.

The nurse was visibly trembling. You see, Kathleen Somers's heart had
never been absolutely right. It was a terrible responsibility to let her
patient face Withrow. Still, neither she nor any other woman could have
held Withrow off. Besides, as she had truly said, there was nothing
explicitly for Kathleen Somers to die of. It was that low vitality, that
whispering pulse, that listlessness; then, a draught, a shock, a bit of
over-exertion and something real and organic could speedily be upon her.
No wonder the woman was troubled. In point of fact, though she had taken
up Miss Somers's breakfast, she hadn't dared tell her the news. And
finally, after breakfast, she broke down. "I can't do it, Mr. Withrow,"
she wailed. "Either you go away or I do."

Withrow knew at first only one thing: that he wouldn't be the one to go.
Then he realized that the woman had been under a long strain, what with
the spring thaws, and a delicate patient who wouldn't mend--and Melora
to fight with, on behalf of all human decency, every day.

"You go, then," he said finally. "I'll take care of her."

The nurse stared at him. Then she thought, presumably, of Kathleen
Somers's ineffable delicacy, and burst out laughing. Hysteria might, in
all the circumstances, be forgiven her.

Then they came back to the imminent question.

"I'll tell her when I do up her room," she faltered.

"All right. I'll give you all the time in the world. But she must be
told I'm here--unless you wish me to tell her myself." Withrow went out
to smoke. But he did not wish to succumb again to the intoxication
Kathleen Somers so disdained, and eventually he went into the barn, to
shut himself away from temptation. It was easier to prepare his
vilifying phrases there.

To his consternation, he heard through the gloom the sound of sobbing.
The nurse, he saw, after much peering, sat on a dusty chopping-block,
crying unhealthily. He went up to her and seized her arm. "Have you told
her?"

"I can't."

"My good woman, you'd better leave this afternoon."

"Not"--the tone itself was fi