One morning in May, Hal came in before Patience was out of bed. She sat down on a chair and tapped the floor with her foot.

“I come charged with a message, a special mission, as it were,” she said. “I hardly know where to begin.”

“Well?”

“Don’t look at me like that, or I’ll never have the courage to go on. Bev is desperately ill,—not in bed, but he has the most frightful pains: his disease, which has been threatening for a year, has developed. It may or may not be fatal. The doctor says it certainly will be unless he has peace of mind, and he is fretting after you like a big baby. The grippe seems to have broken the back of his temper, and he is simply a great calf bleating for its parent. It would be ridiculous if it were not serious. You’d better come back to us, Patience.”

“I won’t.”

“I knew you would say exactly that; but when you think it over you will come. Remember that the doctor practically says that you can either save or prolong his life. Mamma is simply distracted. You know she adores Bev, and she broke down completely last night and told me to come and beg you to return. You know what that means: you’ll have nothing to fear from her.”

“Oh, I can’t go back! I can’t! I think I should die if I went back.”

“We don’t die so easily, my dear. Now, I’ll go and let you think it over,” and the diplomat kissed Patience and retired.

Patience endeavoured to put the matter out of her mind, but it harassed her through her day’s duties, and her work was bad. Steele told her as much the next afternoon when she came into the office late, intending to write there instead of at home. Her room was haunted by Beverly’s pallid face and sunken eyes.

“Oh, well,” she said, flinging herself down before a table, “perhaps it’s the last, so it doesn’t matter.”

“Why? What do you mean? You do look pale. Are you ill?”

Patience hesitated a moment, then told him of the complication. He listened, without comment, looking down upon the skurrying throngs.

“I suppose I must go,” she said in conclusion. “Anyway I feel that I shall go, whether I want to or not.”

He came over to the table and regarded her with his preternatural seriousness.

“Yes,” he said, “you will go. It will be like you.”

“Oh, I am no angel. It’s not that—please! It’s—don’t you know there are some good acts you can’t help? Not only do traditions and conventions drive you into them, but your own selfishness—I haven’t the courage to be lashed by my conscience. If I could give that morphine, do you think I’d go?”

He smiled. “Do you analyse everything like that? However, I choose to keep to my illusions. I think that you have magnificent theories, but act very much like other people. Can I go up and see you sometimes? I may have a chance to know you, now.”

She put up her hand and took his impulsively. “Yes, come,” she said. “That is the only thing that will make life supportable.”