"Mrs. Edward Cruttenden requests the pleasure of Lord Blackborough's company at dinner."

It was a printed card, and Ned Blackborough laid it down on the table, feeling that the world was getting beyond him.

This was about a week or so after Aura's return, and he had intended to call on her that very afternoon. Now he refrained.

"I am so sorry we had to give you such short notice," said Ted, whom he met in the street next day, "but the Hirschs were coming down unexpectedly and it had to be hurried. I hope you can come."

"Oh! I am coming all right," said Ned a trifle surlily. "I hope it won't be too much for Aura."

Ted looked at him with immense surprise. "My dear fellow! Aura is as well as she can be, and awfully interested in it. Well! I'm glad you can come. You'll like Miss Hirsch, she's charming, so fresh and gay."

It was a real parlourmaid who announced Lord Blackborough this time, and he saw a furtive green-grocer in the background; otherwise the house seemed to him much the same, only larger, more pretentious. The drawing-room was distinctly more--what was the word? chaste. Yes! distinctly more chaste. It was white and gold, and was that Aura in a pink satin dress--ye heavens above! in pink satin! She did not look ill, but as their eyes met he was conscious of a distinct shock. There was something wanting in them, the best part of her was not there.

Where was it?

The question absorbed him even while he was being presented to Miss Hirsch, a jolly, handsome, rather stout girl, also--as the fates would have it--in pink satin. But she was literally ablaze with diamonds.

"Aha! my old friend Blackborough!" laughed Mr. Hirsch explosively, "this is good sight for sore eyes. Make me your compliments for my daughter, sir."

"I prefer to make them to Miss Hirsch herself," replied Ned gallantly, and then they went in to dinner.

It was an excellent repast. Ted had evidently pursued the only course consonant with success. He had ordered it direct from Benoist's and kept the minions of the great caterer out of evidence. Iced mellon gave place to consommÉ biscuit, truite a l'aurore to filets financieres, poularde casserole to something else, until at the end the conversation became interspersed with cigarettes and coffee.

It was an enormous success; and all the time Ned Blackborough was wondering what had become of Aura, whither she had gone. Only once did he get a glimpse of what he had known in the past, and that was when, after Miss Hirsch had sung like a second-class professional (in other words like her mother) to his accompaniment, he had asked Aura if he might not accompany her also.

"My dear Blackborough," Ted had exclaimed, "after such singing as Miss Hirsch has just given us, I'm sure my wife would hardly like----"

"But I should like," he had interrupted imperturbably.

Then it was that Aura had said swiftly in an undertone--

"Please don't."

He had obeyed, as he had obeyed the same order once before. But that night he sat up again and drank whisky and water and smoked opium-sodden cigarettes, and the next day he went down to call, for he did not intend that sort of thing should go on.

She did not intend it should either. He found her in the back garden, which was really quite of a decent size, busy planting something between the prim privets, and eunonyms and variegated hollies which, even in this late autumn, gave the wall-surrounding shrubbery a semblance of green.

"Do you know what I am planting?" she asked frankly. "I am planting some iris alata."

He narrowed his eyes and looked at her.

"Hardly in the most beautiful place in the world," he said cynically.

"That won't make them any the less beautiful," she replied and then suddenly her whole face melted, her eyes shone with tears, with smiles, with happiness, regrets, with fair passions and bountiful pities and love without stain. "Oh, Ned! Ned!" she cried, holding out her hand to him again. "I have to beg your pardon for so much--I have to thank you for so much--which shall I do first?"

What could he do save take her hand as frankly as it was given and say "Neither." Since between them he knew there was no possibility of gratitude, no possibility of forgiveness.

So they began to talk, not of her illness or of these later days at all, but of Cwmfaernog, and Plas Afon, and how she had found the snake-stone under the old yew-tree.

"I always wear it, you know, at least I do nowadays," she said, and drawing up her loose sleeve showed it to him worn as an amulet, warm against the fair whiteness of her skin. His heart gave a throb. For all her courage then, she was not happy. Such trifles tell of a search for support.

Then Ted came in, breezy and full of life. It had been a success last night, had it not? The pink satin had not suited Aura quite so well as he had hoped; not so well as it had suited Miss Hirsch, who had looked ripping. Perhaps it ought to have been blue. Or perhaps it was the diamonds that did the trick. Had any one ever seen better diamonds than Miss Hirsch's?

Anyhow, it had been a great success, and they must give some more dinner-parties and get into the way of entertaining.

Aura might ask Mrs. Tressilian and Dr. Ramsay as a beginning.

"You won't get Ramsay," remarked Ned Blackborough; "he is away in Vienna. He has taken three months' leave, but he put in a very good man for the time."

In truth, St. Helena's Hospital was, as Peter Ramsay had declared it would, getting on quite as well without him as it did with him. The only person who was dissatisfied with the new state of affairs was Helen Tressilian, and she was frankly in a very bad temper both with him and with herself. It was so foolish of him. Had she not known it would be absolutely useless she would have sent in her own resignation, but what good would it have done? It would only have made matters worse, since he would never return if she went. All she could do was to hope very sincerely that the three months' change would effect its object, and that he would forget her.

And yet even this did not quite soothe her irritation, even this was not quite what she wanted.

What did she want? She was taking herself severely to task one afternoon when Sister Ann came in looking grave.

"I have just had a letter with some rather bad news in it," she said. "I hope it isn't true, but it sounds serious. It is from my friend who I told you had gone to study at Vienna."

Helen's heart leapt to her mouth. "Well?" she said impatiently, wondering the while with a sudden feeling of dread why she should feel so disturbed.

"I'll read you what he says. 'We are all a bit downhearted just now because Ramsay, who is one of the nicest fellows who ever lived, is ill with pyÆmia. It would be a thousand pities if he were to go out, for he is quite the best operator here. Of course he is being well looked after, but it must be awful away from all one's friends.'"

Helen went deadly white. "Do you think it is true?" she asked almost helplessly.

Sister Ann re-folded the letter methodically. "It must be true, of course, and it is not unlikely. You know he was always a trifle reckless when there was anything to be done even here. One can only hope he is not so very bad. You will send a wire, I suppose?"

"Yes," replied Helen. "Of course we will send a wire--and--yes. I will send a wire, I think."

"It is terribly sad," said Sister Ann, for all her invariable cheerfulness, quite mournfully. "Apart from his immense value to the world, he was such a dear soul in so many ways. I have often thought what an excellent husband and father he would have made."

After she had gone, to tell the news presumably in that even tone of voice, Helen thought with a rush of resentment, the latter sat in a perfect tumult of emotion. Anger, pity, regret all fought for first place. What right, for instance, had Sister Ann to use the past tense in speaking of Dr. Ramsay? He was not dead.

Dead?

Impossible, incredible! It could not, it must not be true!

But what good would a wire be to a man lying perhaps unconscious, at any rate alone?

She stood up pushing her hair back from her forehead. A great wave of pity for him, but more for herself, overcame her; she stared out of the room scarcely seeing what was before her.

Just on the opposite side of the room a long pier glass filled up the space between the two tall windows. It was growing dusk, and the mirror showed dark and empty looking against the light. No, not quite empty, there was a figure in it going away from her into the darkness. It was the figure of a man making haste. It hurried on, its back towards her, down an interminable pathway that was lost in the shadows. It was going, oh, so fast! And she recognized it. It was Peter Ramsay as she had last seen him hurrying away to catch his train. It grew smaller and smaller, it overtook the shadows, they gathered it in.

"No! no!" she cried aloud. "Don't go--don t go!"

Was there a pause? She could not tell. The vision vanished, and she was left to the knowledge that she had once more almost over-stepped the bounds of the unseen, and to a dim sense of something unsuspected in herself.

One thing was certain. He must not go, thinking she cared not at all. How many hours was it to Vienna? That mattered very little if she started as quickly as she could. She must get there sooner or later.

Half an hour afterwards she was at the station, and by midnight she was standing looking out at the stars from the deck of a Channel steamer with the lights of Calais ahead of her. She did not regret her impulse, all she thought of was that somehow that figure she had seen losing itself in the shadows must be stopped, must be brought back to the light.

It was a wearisome journey. She had left without due preparation, she was all unused to foreign travelling, and she did not care to forage for food for fear she might be left behind.

So it was rather a dejected Helen Tressilian who got out in the struggling daylight of a November day at the Haupt Bahnhof, and, after a while, found herself driving, she literally knew not whither, through wide streets and narrow streets to the public hospital. It was there, she knew, that Peter Ramsay was working, so there she hoped to have news of him at once. But she had reckoned without the formalism of German institutions. At first she could hardly elicit the fact that there was such a person as a Scotch physician by name Ramsay in Vienna, for she had called him English, and that error, a grave one to the foreigner, had seemed to discredit her altogether.

Then who was she? Sister or mother? If not, what claim had she to be admitted to the bedside of the "dangerously-sick un-friend-recognising patient?" She had better see the Chief-Head-Over-Superintendent, and if he consented, perhaps!

So she drove off again disheartened. The Chief-Head-Over-Superintendent was out, and after waiting for him till she grew sick and cold she determined to follow him to the Medical College. Here she was met by more formalities, to which was added a suggestion that, not being a relation, she should go to the British consulate and get a certificate that she was of the "due-respectable-and-to-be-admitted-friends."

And then, suddenly, to her despair at the delay, came the memory of Pagenheim. It was silly of her not to have thought of him before. Yes. She would go to Pagenheim; he was her only hope.

She was shown into a room stuffed full of furniture, where a florid, bearded man had evidently just been smoking.

He sat looking with immense interest at the card she had sent in.

"Mein Gott!" he said, going on in fairly idiomatic English. "But your names! T r e s--s i l----"

"Tressilian," said Helen impatiently.

"Tres--silian! Now, Miss, what does that mean? Tre--three--sil-i-an. Does it mean three fools? Wass fur ein--Gott in Himmel! you are crying--GnÄdige Fraulein, pardon."

It was the truth. Helen, worn out by her long and hungry journey, disappointed, driven from pillar to post, had found it too much that her last hope should waste precious time in philological studies.

"I beg your pardon," she said, stifling her tears, "but I have come all the way from England to see Dr. Ramsay, and now I cannot get at him. Do help me if you can."

Dr. Pagenheim blew out his cheeks as if a pipe might have been a consolation to him. "Soh! You--you cannot be his mother--you--you are his sister, doubtless?"

Helen, behind her handkerchief, shook her head. "I--I am a nurse," she said faintly, "and I have come on purpose----"

"But, gnÄdige Fraulein," interposed the great man, becoming professional, "he is already nursed, nursed devotedly. There is no place for you I fear. It is against the rules. If you were a relation it were different."

Helen looked up at him, goaded to desperation.

"But--but I am more than that, Dr. Pagenheim," she said. "I--I am engaged to be married to him."

The blond, florid face melted into instant sentiment, the tongue into German.

"Soh! Oh Love! Love! What dost thou not? So he is betrothed and we knew it not? Stay! is your name Helen?"

"Yes. Helen Tressilian," she replied.

"Liebes Kind!" cried the great professsor. "He has in his delirium called for you by name. Dry your tears, we will mend him for you surely. Helen! Ach! that is an all-powerful, love-compelling name-of-uttermost victory, so have no fear. You shall to him go so soon as I can get on my boots." He stuck out a big slippered foot in explanation and encouragement as he beamed on her.

"If I might have a glass of milk," Helen felt emboldened to say. "I haven't had time, somehow----"

"Gott in Himmel! She is hungry," roared the professor. "Oh, Love! Love! what dost thou not? Greta," this to the elderly servant who answered his furious ringing. "Milk, food, drink, everything for this gracious-betrothed-one while I put on my boots."

Fortified by hot coffee and a roll, Helen, being whirled through the streets of Vienna in the doctor's coupÉ, felt that, come what might, she did not repent her hasty impulse. Even if Peter Ramsay lived.

"Thou must remember, liebes kind," came the professor's jovial voice all softened to warning, "he is very ill; only the good God knows how ill. But we are doing our best for him. The high fever has gone, but the weakness remains. You must be very quiet."

"I am a nurse," she said, "I know." In a way it was only as a nurse that she had come, only because she could not bear to think of him dying alone.

It seemed an interminable age that she sat in the coupÉ while Dr. Pagenheim was preparing the hospital authorities. It was quite a small place, almost private: a place reserved by the doctors for their most serious cases. It had a conventional air, and Helen as she sat could see a sister of charity or two, with large white-winged caps, moving about. Would they let her in? Surely Dr. Pagenheim was powerful enough for that. He came back after a time with the matron, a severe looking sister, with a weary face. He was much graver. "You can see him, and, if you are quiet, you can remain; but he will not know you."

Did he not? As she entered the wide, white ward, empty save for the bed set in the middle, the low, hurried muttering from the figure which lay on it ceased for a moment. It almost seemed as if the mutterer was listening. Then he began again, too low to be intelligible even to the English ears which bent over to listen. The nurses, two fair, simple-faced sisters, looked at her with kindly compassion and curiosity.

"He is so restless," said one, speaking in the low, even sing-song which so many nurses acquire as a kind of whisper. "If he could only sleep; but we dare not give drugs, his heart is so weak."

His right hand, all bandaged up to the elbow, lay slung in a shifting cradle just above the bed-clothes, his left, the fingers closing and unclosing with a terrible regularity, hung half over the bedside. She slipped hers into it and it closed on hers tightly, so tightly that after a time the blood seemed to seek a way through her fingertips. The muttering became more distinct.

"Number 36. I am not sure about number 36."

"He is doing very well," she replied softly. "Sister Ann is quite pleased with him. The dressings were not in the least disturbed, and he slept all night without drugs. He is to have beef-tea to-day," the muttering had ceased, the sick man lay quite still, the grip of his hand was slackening, "and to-morrow he will have chicken, and then, if he will only sleep, sleep, sleep quite quietly, sleep--sleep--sleep."

"GnÄdige Fraulein," came the nurse's whisper, "seat yourself so, there must be no movement if possible."

How long she sat there, her hand in his, she did not know, long enough anyhow to feel that, when, or how, or why she knew not, the very touch of him had become dear to her, for it was not only the tingling of the veins after the almost benumbing pressure of his fingers which sent the thrill to her heart and her brain. He had told her the truth: the past was in the present.

After a time he stirred, swallowed a spoonful of nourishment, and slept again. Another nurse stole into the room and whispered with the two in a corner. Helen could not see their calm, fair, untroubled faces, but she could hear one word, a word they had renounced for themselves, which for all that sent a thrill through their woman hearts.

"Love--true love!"

Was it that? Or had she merely wrecked herself and him for something evanescent, worth little? Helen was half asleep herself, all she realised was that something had brought rest to him for the time.

So when the bad turn came again he was stronger, but so long as she was in the room the painful restlessness never returned. And day by day the dressers were more satisfied.

"Helen of Troy is sufficient to bring any man back from the grave, lich du liebe Gott, what will not the true love do?" beamed Herr Pagenheim, and the nurses sighed and smiled. Finally, there came a day when Peter Ramsay really opened his eyes, found Helen beside him, and closed them again contentedly. After this came cogitation, so by degrees a puzzled look grew to his eyes.

"It was awfully good of you to come and help nurse me," he said weakly at last. "How did you find out I was ill?"

"Sister Ann had a letter, so I came. I knew you must be alone," she replied sedately.

"It must have been an awful journey for you. I feel so sorry about it," he continued almost impatiently. "You must have had a lot of trouble. And then, when you got here--what beats me is, why did they let you in? They are so strict."

She felt the colour rising to her face. "Oh! I managed," she said evasively. "Now, you really must take your Valentine's extract and go to sleep."

He shifted restlessly. "How can I go to sleep when I am worried?" he said pitifully, fretfully as a child. "I tell you it must have given you a lot of trouble, and I'm so vexed."

Her face grew tender as she bent over him. "I assure you I had no trouble at all. It was quite easy. Will you--will you promise me to go to sleep if I tell you how--how I managed?"

"Do," he said with a little sigh. "I really want to know."

"They asked me if I were your mother or your sister," she said, scarcely able to speak for her trembling lips. "So I said no--but--but that I was engaged to be married to you."

He lay quite still. He did not even put out his hand to hers, but the swift tears ran down his hollow cheeks and wetted the pillow.

"You promised you would go to sleep, dear," she said softly, and he closed his eyes, once more like a child.