d I never expect
to. I guess only the Lord who made you can translate you."

Theodosia stood up. The sun was getting low, and the valley beneath
them, ripening to harvest, was like a river of gold. She folded up her
sewing with a steady hand.

"It's five o'clock, so I'll ask you to excuse me, Cecilia. I have a
good deal to attend to. You can ask Emory if he'll drive me to the
station in the morning. I'm going out to Wes."

"Well, for the land's sake," said Cecilia Merritt feebly, as she tied
on her gingham sunbonnet. She got up and went home in a daze.

Theodosia packed her trunk and worked all night, dry-eyed, with agony
and fear tearing at her heart. The iron will had snapped at last, like
a broken reed, and fierce self-condemnation seized on her. "I've been
a wicked woman," she moaned.

A week from that day Theodosia climbed down from the dusty stage that
had brought her from the station over the prairies to the
unpretentious little house where Wesley Brooke lived. A young girl, so
like what Ogden Greene's wife had been fifteen years before that
Theodosia involuntarily exclaimed, "Phoebe," came to the door. Beyond
her, Theodosia saw the white-capped nurse.

Her voice trembled.

"Does--does Wesley Brooke live here?" she asked.

The girl nodded.

"Yes. But he is very ill at present. Nobody is allowed to see him."

Theodosia put up her hand and loosened her bonnet strings as if they
were choking her. She had been sick with the fear that Wesley would be
dead before she got to him. The relief was almost overwhelming.

"But I must see him," she cried hysterically--she, the calm,
easy-going Dosia, hysterical--"I am his wife--and oh, if he had died
before I got here!"

The nurse came forward.

"In that case I suppose you must," she conceded. "But he does not
expect you. I must prepare him for the surprise."

She turned to the door of a room opening off the kitchen, but
Theodosia, who had hardly heard her, was before her. She was inside
the room before the nurse could prevent her. Then she stood, afraid
and trembling, her eyes searching the dim apartment hungrily.

When they fell on the occupant of the bed Theodosia started in bitter
surprise. All unconsciously she had been expecting to find Wesley as
he had been when they parted. Could this gaunt, haggard creature, with
the unkempt beard and prematurely grey hair and the hollow, beseeching
eyes, be the ruddy, boyish-faced husband of her youth? She gave a