Sheila wrote to thank her for sending the trunks. * * * * * "My dear, _ma chère_, Miss Dear," she said. "_Merci beaucoup pour_ my clothes and other beautiful things. I like them. _Je t'aime--je t'aime toujours_. My father will not permit me to go back. _Comme_--how I desire to see you! My father has been sick. He fell down or was hurt in the street. There was blood--a great deal. Are they well--the others? Tell Monsieur Dick I give him _tout mon coeur_. Come to see me if it is _permit_. No more. You could write _peut-être_. _Je t'aime_." "Yours, "SHEILA." * * * * * Nancy read this letter, in the quaint childish hand, with a great wave of dumb sickness creeping over her--a devastating, disintegrating nausea of soul and body. The most significant fact in it, however, that Collier Pratt had fallen down "or been hurt in the street," of course escaped her entirely, except to stir her with a kind of dim pity for his distress. In one of her long night vigils Preston Eustace's face came back to her oddly. She remembered suddenly the strange sad way he had stared at Betty on the evening of her party at the Inn. She reconstructed Betty's love-story, and its sudden breaking off, three years before, and with her new insight into the human heart, decided that these two loved each other still, and must be helped to the consummation of their happiness. She telephoned to them both the next day that they could be of service to her; and made an appointment to meet them at a given hour the next evening at her apartment. She expected and intended to be there herself to give the meeting the semblance of coincidence, and to offer them the hospitality of her house before she was inspired with the excuse that would permit her an exit that left them alone together; but she found herself in the slums of Harlem by an Italian baby's bedside at that hour, and decided that even to telephone would be superfluous, as once finding each other the lovers would be oblivious to all other considerations. What actually happened was that Preston Eustace, exactly on time as was his habit, had been waiting some ten minutes on Nancy's hearth-rug when Betty, delayed by the eccentricities of a casual motor-bus engine, and frantic with anxiety for her friend, burst in upon him. So full was she of the most hectic speculations concerning Nancy's sudden appeal to her that she scarcely noticed who was waiting there to greet her, and when she did notice, scarcely heeded that recognition. "Where's Nancy?" she demanded breathlessly. "I don't know, Betty," Preston Eustace said. "Doesn't Hitty know?" "She says she doesn't!" "How did you happen to be here?" "She sent for me." "She's probably sent for everybody else," Betty said. "She's killed herself, I know she has."