day be an inspiration and a help to the man she would
marry.

"If I have hurt you," she said, as she finished, "I--I can only ask you
to forgive me. If this had not happened, I think I should have--kept my
promise. But now you know--and you will not want me to keep it."

"No. I do not want you to keep it. Oh, what a tragedy we have made of it
all. I might have made it so easy for you."

"You, Anthony?"

"Yes."

He sat silent for a moment, his fingers tapping the arm of his chair,
those strong flexible fingers which an hour ago had done such magical
feats of surgery. Bettina's eyes were held by them.

"I hardly know how to begin; it has to do with--Diana."

"Diana?"

"I love her, dear----"

"Diana?" Bettina spoke, breathlessly. "Oh, and does she love
you--Anthony?"

"I have always loved her--but I thought I had lost her--then when she
came back from Europe I found that she was still free--and that--she
cared. But by that time I had engaged myself to a dear child who really
didn't love me at all."

"But why didn't you tell me, Anthony?"

"Because, my dear, I thought you might be made unhappy."

To others there might have seemed something humorous in the
situation--in its almost farcical complications and misunderstandings.
But these two saw none; the issues were too deep, too serious; death was
too near in that upper room.

"Was that why--she went away----?" Bettina whispered.

"Yes."

"Oh, write and tell her to come back."

"I have written. I wrote yesterday. I saw that you were not happy. I
felt that I had no right to permit you to marry me when my heart was
bound up in another woman--as it was bound up in her. I felt that in
marriage there is something which goes beyond conventional honor. As a
physician I have seen much of unhappiness--and I could not sanction in
myself that which I would not have sanctioned in another. So I told
Diana. I think instinct warned me there was some one else, after your
flight with Justin."

"And now--if he gets--well."

Anthony stood up. "He shall get well," he said, steadily. "I scarcely
dare think of the things which are coming to you and to me, dear child.
But when I think of them my heart says, 'Thank God.'"

If she wept now in his arms, it was as a daughter might weep in the arms
of a father--there was love between them at last, but it was the love of
tried friendship, of passionate gratitude on her part, of protective
affection on his.

When he had qui