"What sweet linen!"

"I shopped it for you."

"You, too--you're in linen, Hester?"

"A percale shirt waist. I shopped it for you, too."

"Give me your hand," he said, and pressed a string of close kisses into
its palm.

The simplicity of the outrageous subterfuge amazed even her. She held
hothouse grapes at two dollars a pound to his lips, and he ate them
through a smile.

"Naughty, extravagant girl!" he said.

"I saw them on a fruit stand for thirty cents, and couldn't resist."

"Never mind; I'll make it up to you."

Later, he asked for braille books, turning his sightless face toward her
as he studied, trying to concentrate through the pain in his lung.

"If only you wouldn't insist upon the books awhile yet, dear. The doctor
says it's too soon."

"I feel so strong, Hester, with you near, and, besides, I must start the
pot boiling."

She kissed down into the high nap of his hair, softly.

Evenings, she read to him newspaper accounts of his fellow-soldiers, and
the day of the peace, for which he had paid so terribly, she rolled his
bed, alone, with a great tugging and straining, to the open window,
where the wind from the river could blow in against him and steamboat
whistles shoot up like rockets.

She was so inexpressibly glad for the peace day. Somehow, it seemed
easier and less blackly futile to give him up.

Of Wheeler for three running weeks she had not a glimpse, and then, one
day, he sent up a hamper, not a box, but an actual trunk of roses, and
she, in turn, sent them up the back way to Kitty's flat, not wanting
even their fragrance released.

With Kitty there were little hurried confabs each day outside the
apartment door in the hallway before the elevator shaft. A veil of awe
seemed to wrap the Drew woman.

"I can't get it out of my head, Hester. It's like a fairy story, and, in
another way, it's a scream--Wheeler standing for this."

"Sh-h, Kitty! His ears are so sensitive."

"Quit shushing me every time I open my mouth. Poor kid! Let me have a
look at him. He wouldn't know."

"No! No!"

"God! if it wasn't so sad it would be a scream--Wheeler footing the
bills!"

"Oh--you! Oh--oh--you!"

"All right, all right! Don't take the measles over it. I'm going. Here's
some chicken broth I brought down. Ed sent it up to me from Sherry's."

But Hester poured it into the sink for some nameless reason, and brewed
some fresh from a fowl she tipped the hallboy a dollar to go out and
purch