te the way that Browning had put it, and
she thought she would like to be sure--she could almost see herself
saying it to Christopher.

So she went into her husband's room to get the book.

Ridgeley's books were on the shelf above his desk. They had nothing to
do with his medical library--that was down-stairs in his office, and now
and then he would bring up a great volume. But he had a literary side,
and he had revealed some of it to Anne in the days before he had been
too busy. His Browning was marked, and it was not hard to find "The Last
Ride." She opened at the right page, and stood reading--an incongruous
figure amid Ridgeley's masculine belongings in her sheer negligee of
faint blue.

She closed the book, put it back on the shelf, and was moving away, when
her eyes were caught by two words--"For Anne," at the top of a sheet of
paper which lay on Ridgeley's desk. The entire page was filled with
Ridgeley's neat professional script, and in a flash the gesture which he
had made the night before returned to her, as if he were trying to hide
something from her gaze.

She bent and read....

Oh, was this the way he had spent the hours of the night? Searching for
words which might comfort her, might clear away her doubts, might bring
hope to her heart?

And he had found things like this: "_My little sister, Death_," said
good St. Francis; ... "_The darkness is no darkness with thee, but the
night is as clear as day; the darkness and light to thee are both
alike_..." "_Yea, though I Walk through the Valley of the Shadow_ ..."
These and many others, truths which had once been a part of her.

She read, avidly. Oh, she had been thirsty--for this! Hungry for this!
And _Ridgeley_--! The tears dripped so that she could hardly see the
lines. She laid her cheek against the paper, and her tears blistered it.

She carried it into her room. Christopher's note still lay on her
pillow. She read it again, but she had no ears now for its call. She
rang for her maid. "I shall stay in bed and write some letters."

She wrote to Christopher, after many attempts. "We have been such good,
_good_ friends. And we mustn't spoil it. Perhaps if you could go away
for a time, it would be best for both of us. I am going to believe that
some day you will find great happiness. And you would never have found
happiness with me, you would have found only--fear. And I know now what
the old man meant about the beads--'What you think is evil--cannot