She nodded, and her profile, under the snug gray hat, was a little like that of a handsome and somewhat mischievous but strong-willed boy. "Was that so dreadful of me--as a hostess? I admit that a doctor ought to be allowed to rest when he is away from home, but I knew that he was just back from a long voyage and was feeling fit as a fiddle, as he himself said. And there is really no very competent man in the town where my friend is ill; it was such a wonderful chance for her to have great skill at her service. And such skill! Oh, how he went to work for her! It made one feel at once that something was being done, where before people had merely tried to do things." King was making rapid calculation. At the end of it, "Would you mind telling me whether you have had any sleep at all?" he begged. She turned her face toward him for an instant. "Do I look so haggard and wan?" she queried with a quick glance. "Yes, I had a good two hours. And I'm so happy now to know that Estelle is sleeping quietly that it's much better than to have slept myself." "Do you do this sort of thing often?" "Not just such spectacular night work, but I do try to see that a little is done to look after a few people who have had a terribly hard time of it. But this is all--or mostly--since I came back from my year away. I learned just a few things during that year, you know." "Your cousin--do you mind?--gave me just a bit of an idea why you went," he ventured. "Oh, Leila Stockton." Her lips took on an amused curl. "Of course Leila would. She--chatters. But she's a dear girl; it's just that she can't easily get a new point of view." He pressed her with his questions, for his discernment told him that it was of no use, while they were flying along the road at this pace, with a hamper at their feet--or at his feet, crowding him rather uncomfortably and forcing him to sit with cramped legs--no use for him to talk of the subject uppermost in his anxious mind. So he got from her, as well as he could, the story of the year, and presently had her telling him eagerly of the people she had met, and the progress she had made in the study of human beings. It was really an engrossing tale, quietly as she told it, and many as were the details he saw that she kept back. "I found out one thing very early," she said. "I knew that I could never come back and live as I had lived before, with no thought of any one but myself." "I don't believe you had ever done that." "I had--I had, if ever any one did. I went away to school in Paris for two years; I wouldn't go to college--how I wish I had! I was the gayest, most thoughtless girl you ever knew until--the thing happened that sent my world spinning upside down. Why, Mr. King, I was so selfish and so thoughtless that I could turn that poor girl away from my door with a careless denial, and never see that she was desperate--that it wanted only one more such turning away to make her do the thing she did."