He nodded. “And why you are here and why I should not be. I have been inexcusable. _I_ am the traitor--the waster of what I valued most.” “Don’t keep saying that,” she protested. “Nothing can be wasted when we love. Jack lived and died that we might know.” Through the gloom of self-reproach which was settling over him--settling between them--he saw her outstretched hands; caught them; was reminded of her feverish state. “Dear, it will come right,” he made effort to assure her and, with her, himself. “We mustn’t allow anything to be wasted, not a moment of our time together, not a regret for the innocence which I should have died rather than----” Her smile stopped him--the shy, tremulous, revealing smile so lately learned. Had a dew-wet violet along a woodland path looked up at him, he could not have trod upon it. He must not tread upon that smile. He returned to his delightful care of her. His first and most important obligation was to see that she did not become ill, he told her. She must rest now; must sleep off her temperature. He rang for Mrs. Morrison; agreed that their charge might be put to bed in Jack’s four-poster; himself suggested that the Airedale be allowed upstairs to snuggle at her feet. And when the housekeeper had finished her motherly offices, he made her no explanation of why he still sat reading in the outer room. Not since the slight ailments to which all children are heir had Dolores been ill. Shivering into the eider-down of the historic bed, she felt vaguely wretched, uncertain, lost. From the same impulse which had asked the reward of a good-night kiss from Morrison for her tractability, she now asked John: “You won’t go away?” “Leave the corridor door ajar, Morrison.” As if from afar she heard his instructions. “Come up again when it is time for her medicine. And, Morrison, I have discharged Mrs. Cabot’s maid. She is to leave as soon as she can pack her things.” Dolores grew warmer, then uncomfortably warm. She must soon have fallen into a doze. When she opened her eyes, she saw that the night lamp had been clicked off and the light from the living-room shaded from her face by a screen. The four, tall, pineapple sentinels guarded her--they and someone else. John sat beside the bed, the puppy drowsing in his arms. She was glad that he had become reconciled to the poor little beast; that the guiltless cause of Jack’s death was not to pay the price which she had paid in early life for an equally unintentional fault. But _was_ John reconciled? The look on his face brought her to acute consciousness. It was a dreadful look. “Try not to begrudge the price,” she murmured. “For the least thing in life you have to pay, you know. To me, love is inestimable.” At sound of her voice the young dog lifted one of his scraggly eyelids, and, without otherwise moving, thumped his stub of a tail. John’s expression changed. He leaned toward her.