me. Dear little Josephine! Sitting
there in the Association without family, with no friends but her
patrons, and those girls whose little romances went on about her! No
romances ever came her way. So she had made one all of her own. I
proved to the Matron easily that what she had discovered by accident
was not her affair, that to keep Josephine's secret was a virtue, and
not a sin. I was sure of that, for, as I watched her afterwards, I
knew that Josephine had played her part in her dream romance so well,
that she no longer remembered that it was not true. She had forgotten
she had not really borne the child she carried so lovingly in her
arms.

* * * * *

"Is that all?" asked the Journalist.

"That is all," replied the Trained Nurse.

"By Jove," said the Doctor, "that is a good story. I wish I had told
it."

"Thank you, Doctor," laughed the Trained Nurse. "I thought it was a
bit in your line."

"But fancy the cleverness of the little thing to do all the details up
so nicely," said the Lawyer. "She dovetailed everything so neatly.
But what I want to know is whether she planned the baby when she
planned the make-believe husband?"

"I fancy not," replied the Nurse. "One thing came along after another
in her imagination, quite naturally."

"Poor little Josephine--it seems to me hard luck to have had to
imagine such an every day fate," sighed the Divorcee.

"Don't pity her," snapped the Doctor. "Poor little Josephine, indeed!
Lucky little Josephine, who arranged her own romance, and risked no
disillusion. There have been cases where the joys of the imagination
have been more dangerous."

"You are sure she had no disillusion?" asked the Critic.

"I am," said the Nurse.

"And her name was Josephine?" asked the Divorcee.

"It was not, and Utica was not the town," replied the Nurse.

"Perhaps her disillusion is ahead of her," said the Journalist. "'Say
no man'--or woman either--'is happy until the day of his death.'"

"She _is_ dead," said the Nurse.

"I told you she was lucky little Josephine," ejaculated the Doctor.

"And she died without telling the boy the truth?" asked the
Journalist.

"The truth?" repeated the Nurse. "I've told you that she had forgotten
it. No woman was ever so loved by a son. No mother ever so grieved
for."

"Then the son lives?" asked the Doctor.

The Nurse smiled quietly.

"Good-night," said the Doctor. "I am going to bed to dream of that. It