In those months he had come to read Sheila--so he thought--like an open book. He had learned by heart all her moods, the good and the bad, the sweet and the bitter. He knew she could be as divinely tender and compassionate as a celestial mother; he also knew that she could be as barren of sympathy and as relentless as fate itself. She could pour forth her whole throbbing soul, impulsive, warm, and radiant, as a true Celt, yet she could be as impersonal, terse, and cryptic as a marconigram. He loved these very extremes in her, her unmitigated hatred for the things she hated, and her unfailing love for the things she loved. She made no pretense or boast for herself; she was what she was for all the world to see. And Peter had found her the stanchest, sweetest, most vital--albeit the most stubborn--piece of womanhood he had ever known. Her very nickname of "Leerie" was her open letter of introduction to every one; her smile and the wonder-light in her eyes were her best credentials. Small wonder it was that her patients watched for her to come and that Peter felt he could snap his fingers at the scandalmongers. But Peter wasn't snapping them now--or smiling. His fists were doubled tight in his pockets, and he clenched his teeth harder as he paced the walk from pond to rest-house. How the accursed tongues of the gossips rang in his head! "Rather odd the sanitarium should have sent for him, wasn't it? Don't you know he was the young surgeon who was mixed up in that affair with that popular nurse?"... "Oh yes, they hushed it up and sent them both away."... "Nothing definite was ever explained, but they were always together, just as they are now, and you can't get smoke without some burning."... "Yes, Doctor Brainard and Miss O'Leary. Didn't you ever hear about what happened three years ago?" Peter's stride seemed to measure forth the length of each offending tongue, and when he reached the end of his beaten track he swung about as if to meet and silence them all, for all time. But instead he came face to face with the two who had caused them to wag. So absorbed were the surgeon and nurse in what they had to say to each other that they brushed by Peter without seeing him. He might have been one of the rustic posts of the rest-house or the pine-tree growing close by. As they passed, Peter scanned narrowly the half-averted face of the girl he loved and found it pitifully changed in those few days. The luminous light had gone from her eyes; her lips no longer curved to the gracious, demure smile Peter had always called "cloistered." They were set to grim determination, as if the girl had gripped fast to a purpose and no amount of shaking or persuasion would induce her to let go. Her eyes were circled and anxious. Peter groaned unconsciously at his glimpse of her, while Hennessy from his vantage-point on the stump shook a vengeful fist at the retreating back of the surgeon.