k it will be best to wait?"

"Why?"

"Oh," her cheeks flamed, "I don't know why--only I don't want to get
married--for a long time, Diana."

Diana looked at her with puzzled eyes. There was some change in the
child which she could not fathom. What had happened to little Bettina in
the short time since she had been away? She would ask Sophie--she would
ask--Anthony.

In the adjoining room the telephone rang. Sophie, going to answer it,
came back with the announcement, "It's Anthony. He wanted to know if you
had returned. He needs you at the hospital. That little girl with the
appendicitis is very much worse. But I told him that you had just
reached home, and that you were so tired, and it was so late----"

"Sophie, how could you? Tell him I'll come. Ask him to send his car for
me. Bettina, dear, hand me my slippers, and help me with my hair."

Bettina was shivering and white. "Is it the girl Anthony operated on?"
she asked.

"Yes. Sophie, I'll wear the white serge. It's the easiest to get into,
and my long coat----"

Bettina's shaking voice went on: "Wouldn't it be--dreadful--if anything
happened? Wouldn't it be dreadful--if she should die?"

Sophie laid her hand on the girl's shoulder. "Help Diana now, dear," she
advised; "we'll talk about it afterward."

CHAPTER XIII

HER LETTER TO ANTHONY

Diana never forgot that ride in the dark to Harbor Light. It was a clear
night, with the sea like a sheet of silver under the moon. The big
building, which loomed up, at last, before her, seemed, with its
yellow-lighted windows, like some monster of giant size, gazing
wide-eyed upon the waters.

The gardens, through which she passed, were heavy with the scent of
hyacinths; the slight wash of the waves on the beach only emphasized the
stillness.

As she drove up to the doorway, two night nurses flitted through the
corridor, ghost-like in their white uniforms.

Then came Anthony. His face looked worn and worried.

"We couldn't save her, Diana," he said, tensely.

"Oh, the poor little thing!"

"We made a fight for it. I sent for you because if she roused I wanted
you to be there."

"If you had telephoned sooner."

"I could not. The change was very sudden." He flung himself into a
chair. "Oh, what is all my skill worth, Diana, when I couldn't save that
child?"

She had seen him in such moods before, when he had felt powerless
against all the opposing forces of disease and death.

But she did not ca