And oddly enough, out of this welter of
her thoughts, there came to her memory a screened bed in a hospital
ward, and a dying gutter-girl looking at her with unearthly eyes and
telling her in a thin whisper:

"I wanted to see if you was good enough for _him_. You ain't. But
remember what I'm tellin' you--you could be."

Pierre--Peter Champneys! She slipped to her knees and hid her face
in her shaking hands. Peter Champneys! As in a lightning flash she
saw him as that girl Gracie had seen him. Pierre--Pierre, with his
eyes of an archangel, his lips that were the chrism of life--_this_
was Peter Champneys! And she had hated him, let him go, all
unknowing, she had wished to put in _his_ place Berkeley Hayden. The
handsome, worldly figure of Hayden seemed to dwindle and shrink.
Pierre stood as on a height, looking at her steadfastly. Her head
went lower. Tears trickled between her fingers.

_You ain't good enough for him, but you could be_.

"I can be, I can be! Oh, God, I can be! Only let him love me--when
he knows!"

She heard Mrs. Thatcher's voice downstairs, after a while. Then a
deeper voice, a man's voice, with a note of impatience and eagerness
in it.

"No, don't call her. I'll go right on up," said the voice, over the
feminine apologies and protests. "I have to see her--I must see her
now. No, I can't wait."

Somebody came flying up the steps. She hadn't closed her door, and
his tall figure seemed to fill it. He stopped, with a gasp, at sight
of the weeping woman kneeling before the picture on the mantel.

"Anne!" he cried. "Anne!" And he would have raised her, but she
clung to his knees, lifting her tear-stained face, her eyes full of
an adoration that would never leave them until life left them.

"Peter!" she cried. "Peter! That--that butterfly! I know now,
Peter!"

Again he tried to raise her, but she clasped his knees all the
closer.

"You mean you know my name is really Peter Champneys, dearest?"

But she caught his hands. "Peter, Peter, don't you understand?" she
cried, laughing and weeping. "I--I'm the ogress! I'm Nancy Simms!
I'm Anne Champneys!"

He looked from her to her portrait and back again. He gave a great
ringing cry of, "My wife!" and lifted her in a mighty grip that
swept her up and into his arms. "My wife!" he cried. "My wife!"

Undoubtedly the Red Admiral was a fairy!

* * * * *

On a certain morning Mr. Jason Vandervelde was sitting at his de