essed his hands into his
eye-sockets and kept them there.

"I am ridiculous!" he muttered and shook himself straight. After an
ineffectual, suffocated attempt to begin, "I am ridiculous!" he said
again, and without further concession to weakness started in: "I ought
to have written you, Aurora. But I had seemed to be so unfortunate in
writing I did not dare to try it again. Heaven knows what I wrote. I
don't; but it must have been a prodigy of caddishness to offend you so
deeply. It doesn't do much good to say I am sorry."

"Your letter was all right," broke in Aurora. "I only didn't understand
at first. Afterwards I did. I tell you, that letter _was all
right_."

"It was written in a mood--a perplexity, a despair, you have no means of
understanding, dear Aurora. When your answer showed me what I had done,
I could have cut my throat, but I could not have come to tell you I was
not the monster of ingratitude I appeared to be. Not that a man can't
get out of bed, if there is reason enough, and take himself somehow
where he wants to be, but because of a sick man's unreasonable nerves,
which can start him raving and make him a thing to laugh at. I had the
common sense, thank Heaven! to see that I must wait. Then, as the days
passed, it all quieted down. Vincent was with me, a tranquilizing
neighborhood.

"It seemed finally as if it might be almost better to let things rest as
they were, to let that be the way of separating from you. I had almost
made up my mind to do it, Aurora. Vincent has had me out for various
airings, I have gone on several walks alone, but till to-day I avoided
to take the road toward this house. I am so used to pain that I've grown
stoical, you know, Aurora. I can stand any pain. I shut my teeth and
say, 'It will have to stop some time.' But all at once it became too
strong for me--not the pain, or the wish to see you, but the feeling
that I could not bear to have you thinking me ungrateful. I, who hate
ingratitude as the blackest thing in the wide world, to pass with you,
with you, for an ungrateful beast!"

"Don't! don't, Gerald!" Aurora hushed him. "I can't let you talk like
that. You know you couldn't be ungrateful, nor I couldn't think it of
you."

"No, I'm not ungrateful. I'm not, dear," he caressingly asseverated, and
closing her two hands between his treasured them against his cheek. "I
want you to be altogether sure of it. If I did not recognize the
enormity of my debt to you, Aurora,