Poor Missy felt like a penitent child, after that illness of hers. She did not feel any better, nor any surer that she should be any stronger or wiser; but she felt the certainty that she had put a very wrong value upon things, and that life was a very different matter from what she had been considering it. She felt so ashamed of her self-will, so humbled about her own judgment. She still did not like long black dresses on men or women, but she felt very much obliged to St. John and the good Sister for all the weeks they had spent in taking care of her. And although stained glass windows, and swinging lamps, and church embroidery did not appeal to her in the least; she began to understand how they might appeal to people of a different temperament. Let it not be imagined that Missy came out of this a lamb of meekness. On the contrary, she was very exacting about her broth, and once cried because the nurse would not keep Miss Varian out of the room. But then she was more sorry for it than she had been in the habit of being, and made Miss Varian a handsome apology the first time she was well enough to see her. She looked out of the window, across the road, upon the trees just budding into loveliness on the lawn of her dearest home, and wondered that she should have thought it mattered so very much whether she lived in this house or in that, considering it was not going to be forever, either here or there. St. John came and sat down by her one afternoon, as she lay in a great easy chair, looking out at the spring verdure and the soft declining sunshine. She had never got to talking of very deep things to St. John, since her unhappy controversy with him, but she felt so sure that he would not talk of anything that she objected to, that she was at her ease with him. They talked about the great tulip tree on the lawn, that they could just see from the window, and the aspens by the gate, just large-leaved enough to shiver in the softly-moving breeze. Then Missy forced herself to ask if a tenant had been found for the house, and he answered her, yes, and also, that he had heard that the Andrews' place was rented too. "I'm sorry," he said, "that Mr. Andrews has gone away from here. I felt as if it were the sort of place he might have been happy in, and much respected. Did you ever get to know him well? I remember that you took a fancy to the children." "I saw a good deal of them last summer," said Missy, wearily. How far off last summer seemed! "What a terrible life!" said St. John, musingly. "Not one man in a thousand could have borne what he did; it was almost heroic, and yet I think my first impression was that he was common-place." "I don't understand," said Missy, "tell me." "It isn't possible you don't know about his wife?"