And Death, that spares them both, and old Madam Bradley, too (eighty-eight now and half paralysed for nearly twenty years!), what had we done that he should take away one whom we and the world--her world--could so ill spare? Does _Someone_, indeed, know why, my sweetheart Peggy? I try to think so, but it is hard to see. Nine years ago Harriet put Peggy into her mother's arms and praised the little thing and kissed them both, and then told Roger that she must leave them, for she felt ill and would not risk the responsibility of further nursing. She would send a good nurse straight from New York, she said, and Roger himself took her there, leaving the doctor with Margarita, as soon as he dared. He brought back the other nurse, wired me to look after Harriet, and left her comfortable in the little apartment of a good friend of hers, with a promise of a speedy return. He never saw her alive again. Dr. McGee, even then a famous physician and devotedly attached to her, worked day and night over her, but it was useless; the over-strained, busy heart had given way and she lived only three days, growing feebler with every hour. I was sitting beside her in the afternoon, trying to be cheerful, trying to cheer her with those futile subterfuges we are forced to, trying to get it all clear in my own troubled mind, when she smiled whimsically at me and begged me to spare myself such pain. "A nurse is the last person to need such talk, dear Mr. Jerrolds," she whispered to me, and as the good deaconess who had been her first helper in her chosen work burst into tears and stumbled from the room, she put out her hand and I took it silently. "What you have been--what you have been, Harriet!" I muttered unsteadily, and then her eyes met mine. "What have I been?" her lips barely formed the words, "do you know?" There in her soft brown eyes I saw at last--at once. God knows I never guessed before. They met mine so calmly, so honestly, so fearlessly--alas, they could be fearless now! "And I have been such a fool--such a brute!" "Hush! you never knew," she whispered, "you could not help it, my dear. It was so from the very first--when you saw my diary." "But I might--I might have----" Again she smiled whimsically. "O no," she said quietly, "there was no chance for me, of course. I never dreamed of it, my dear. But--but I wanted you to know it. There has never been anybody but you." I tried to speak, but could not, and again, but the words dried on my lips. Then I saw that she was sleeping--from exhaustion, probably, and sat by her in silence till the deaconess came back, red-eyed, and sent me away. I bent over her and kissed her cheek, before I left, and I am sure that her lips moved and that the hand I had held while she slept pressed mine faintly. But she did not open her eyes, and in the morning the message came that she had drifted easily away, in that same sleep before dawn. Gone--and I never knew, never faintly surmised, never considered!