n any one else in the world, and he
understands me better than anybody.

You'll get this when you go home to supper, and I want you to
telephone Aunt Isobel right away and tell her I won't be home
to-night. She will think I am with Rose and that will keep her from
being anxious. I don't care how anxious grandmother is! To-morrow
I'll send them a wire from Chicago telling them I'm married.

Dear Quin, I know this is a terribly serious step, and I know you
won't approve; but I am unhappy enough to die, and I don't know where
else to turn, or what to do. Some day I hope you will know Mr. Phipps
better, and see what a really fine man he is. Do try to comfort Aunt
Isobel, and make her understand. Please don't hate me, but try to
forgive your utterly miserable friend,

E. M. B.

Quin stood staring at the letter. He felt as he had on that August day
when the flying shrapnel struck him--the same intense nausea, the deadly
exhaustion, the bursting pain in his head. Involuntarily he raised his
hand to the old wound, half expecting to feel the blood stream again
through his fingers.

"Married! Married!" he kept repeating to himself dazedly. "Miss Nell gone
to marry that man, that scoundrel!"

He sat down on the stair steps and tried to hold the thought in his mind
long enough to realize it. But Phipps himself kept getting in the way:
Phipps the slacker, as he had known him in the army; Phipps the
condescending lord of creation, who had refused to take his hand at Mr.
Ranny's; and oftenest of all Phipps the philanderer, who had insulted
Rose Mattel, and been responsible for the dismissal of more than one
nurse from the hospital. The mere thought of such a man in connection
with Eleanor Bartlett made Quin's strong fingers clench around an
imaginary neck and brought beads of perspiration to his forehead.

"Something's got to be done!" he thought wildly, staggering to his feet.
"I got to stop it; I got----"

Then the sense of his helplessness swept over him, and he sat down again
on the steps. She had evidently left on the eight-o'clock train for
Chicago, and it was now eight-thirty. There was nothing to be done. What
a fool he had been to go on hoping and daring! She had told him again and
again that she didn't care for him; but she had also told him that she
did not intend to many anybody. But if she hadn't cared for him, why had
she come to him with her troubles, and foll