"I'm all right. Of course, I look like the dickens, but who wouldn't? It has been terrible. Weeks and weeks of it. You'll never know what—" She shuddered so violently that he threw his arm about her and drew her close. "Well, it's all over now, girlie. Brace up. Sunshine from now on. It was a bad day's work when you let yourself in for it, but that's all over now." "Yes, it's all over," she said slowly. "Everything's all over." Her wide, sombre eyes fixed their gaze upon the rippling blue flames in the grate. "Well, smile a little. It's time some one of us Tresslyns had a chance to grin a little without bearing it." She raised her eyes and slowly inspected this big brother of hers. Seemingly she had not taken him in as a whole up to that moment of consideration. A slight frown appeared on her brow. "I've been hearing rather bad things about you, George," she said, after a moment. "Now that I look at you, you do look pretty shaky,—and pretty well threshed out. Is it true? Have you been as bad as they say?" He flushed. "Has Simmy Dodge been talking?" "Simmy is your friend, George," she said sharply. "It's always a fellow's friends who do the most talking," said he, "and that's what hurts. You don't mind what your enemies say." "Simmy has not mentioned your name to me in weeks." "Well, I don't call that being friendly. He knows everything. He ought to have told you just how rotten I've been, because you could believe Simmy. You can't believe every one, Anne, but I know Simmy would give it to you straight. Yes, I've been all that could be expected. The only thing I haven't been is a liar." "Can't you brace up, George? You are really the best of the lot, if you only knew it. You—" "I don't drink because I like it, you know, Anne," he said earnestly. "I see," she said, nodding her head slowly. "You drink because it's the surest way to prove to Lutie that you are still in love with her. Isn't that it?" She spoke ironically. "When I think how much you would have liked Lutie if she'd had a chance to—" "Don't tell it to me, George," she interrupted. "I didn't in the least care whom you married. As a matter of fact, I think you married the right girl." "You do?" he cried eagerly. "Yes. But she didn't marry the right man. If you had been the right man and had been taken away from her as you were, she would have died of a broken heart long before this. Logic for you, isn't it?" "She's got too much sense to die of a broken heart. And that isn't saying she wasn't in love with me, either."