lready ended.

After a while he said: "If you will get well--whatever I am--we two
men have in common a memory that can never die. If there were
nothing else--God knows whether there is--that memory is enough, to
make us live at peace with one another. . . . I do not entirely
understand how it is with me, but I know that some things have been
washed out of my heart--leaving little of the bitterness--nothing
now of anger. It has all been too sad for such things--a tragedy
too deep for the lesser passions to meddle with. . . . Let us
forgive each other. . . . She will know it, somehow."

Their hands slowly closed together and remained.

"Philip!"

"Sir?"

"Ailsa is here."

"Yes, sir."

"Will you say to her that I would like to see her?"

For a moment Berkley hesitated, then rose quietly and walked into
the adjoining ward.

Ailsa was bending over a sick man, fanning away the flies that
clustered around the edge of the bowl from which he was drinking.
And Berkley waited until the patient had finished the broth.

"Ailsa, may I speak to you a moment?"

She had been aware of his entrance, and was not startled. She
handed the bowl and fan to an attendant, turned leisurely, and came
out into the aisle.

"What is it?"

"Colonel Arran wishes to see you. Can you come?"

"Certainly."

She led the way; and as she walked he noticed that all the lithe
grace, all the youth and spring to her step had vanished. She
moved wearily; her body under the gray garb was thin; blue veins
showed faintly in temple and wrist; only her superb hair and eyes
had suffered no change.

Colonel Arran's eyes opened as she stooped at his bedside and laid
her lips lightly on his forehead.

"Is there another chair?" he asked wearily.

Ailsa's glance just rested on Berkley, measuring him in
expressionless disdain. Then, as he brought another chair, she
seated herself.

"You, too, Philip," murmured the wounded man.

Ailsa's violet eyes opened in surprise at the implied intimacy
between these men whom she had vaguely understood were anything but
friends. But she remained coldly aloof, controlling even a shiver
of astonishment when Colonel Arran's hand, which held hers, groped
also for Berkley's, and found it.

Then with an effort he turned his head and looked at them.

"I have long known that you loved each other," he whispered. "It
is a happiness that God sends me as well as you. If it be His will
that I--do not recove