t to the man who pulled you back
from the edge of the yawning grave only six months ago!"

"Yawning fiddlesticks!" snapped I, elegantly. "There was nothing wrong
with me except that I wanted to be fussed over. And I have been. And
I've loved it. But it must stop now." I rose and walked over to the
table and faced Von Gerhard, sitting there in the depths of a great
chair. "You do not seem to realize that I am not free to come and go,
and work and play, and laugh and live like other women. There is my
living to make. And there is--Peter Orme. Do you think that I could stay
on here like this? Oh, I know that Max is not a poor man. But he is
not a rich man, either. And there are the children to be educated, and
besides, Max married Norah O'Hara, not the whole O'Hara tribe. I want to
go to work. I am not a free woman, but when I am working, I forget, and
am almost, happy. I tell you I must be well again! I will be well! I am
well!"

At the end of which dramatic period I spoiled the whole effect by bowing
my head on the table and giving way to a fit of weeping such as I had
not had since the days of my illness.

"Looks like it," said Max, at which I decided to laugh, and the
situation was saved.

It was then that Von Gerhard proposed the thing that set us staring at
him in amused wonder. He came over and stood looking down at us, his
hands outspread upon the big library table, his body bent forward in an
attitude of eager intentness. I remember thinking what wonderful hands
they were, true indexes of the man's character; broad, white, surgeonly
hands; the fingers almost square at the tips. They were hands as
different from those slender, nervous, unsteady, womanly hands of Peter
Orme as any hands could be, I thought. They were hands made for work
that called for delicate strength, if such a paradox could be; hands to
cling to; to gain courage from; hands that spelled power and reserve. I
looked at them, fascinated, as I often had done before, and thought that
I never had seen such SANE hands.

"You have done me the honor to include me in this little family
conclave," began Ernst von Gerhard. "I am going to take advantage of
your trust. I shall give you some advice--a thing I usually keep for
unpleasant professional occasions. Do not go back to New York."

"But I know New York. And New York--the newspaper part of it--knows me.
Where else can I go?"

"You have your book to finish. You could never finish it there, is it