u are not suffering?"

"No, only a little dazed. That's natural after looking death in the face
for hours and hours while everything slipped away from you--things you
had always thought meant something."

"Yes, poor girl!"

"And they--meant nothing. They never do."

"No. You found that at death's door; I found it at life's. I want to tell
you something, dear, that will make you forget yourself--and think of me.
You are sure you cannot sleep?"

"I do not want to sleep."

"Priscilla, I have given myself to love! You can understand. Travers has
just told me--about him and you!"

A faint colour touched the face on the pillow.

"It was the telling that brought him around. He's superb, and you're a
daffy little goose, Cilla. Imagine a man like Travers letting a girl like
you slip through his fingers."

"He did!" weakly interrupted Priscilla.

"But he followed you right down, and into--hell!"

"Into life and joy, you mean, Margaret--life!"

"Well, at any rate, he was with you. It is magnificent to see a man,
or a woman, big enough, brave enough, and sensible enough to sweep the
senseless rubbish of life aside, and get each other! Oh! it's life as God
meant it. Priscilla, the letter I wrote to-day was to--_my_ man. He's as
splendid as yours. I told you once how I--I loved children. I had taken
that love for granted until something happened. A friend of mine
married--one of the girls my people thought was the kind for me to know.
She didn't understand life any more than I did; she just took one of the
men who wore the same label she did. Her child came--a year after; a
horrible little creature--diseased; dreadful--can you understand?"

"Yes"--Priscilla had turned toward the girl by her side--"yes, I know
what you mean. I have been a nurse."

"That was the first time things we should have known--were known by my
friend and me!" Margaret's voice was low and hard.

"She--she cursed him, her husband--and left him! It was terrible! I was
frightened, more frightened than I had ever been. Everything seemed
tottering around me. I thought--I must die; I dared trust nothing. Just
then--some one told me--he loved me; and I--I had loved him. But I was
more afraid of him than of any one in God's world. I thought I was going
mad, and then--I went to Doctor Ledyard and told him all about it. I just
threw my whole burden of doubt and ignorance upon him--he is such a
_good_ man! Sometimes I weep when I think of him. He was fath