“Married him--Gregory? But she’d only known him four days.” Helen nodded. “That’s just it. Isn’t it--” she stopped, fearing to wound. “Magnificent--brave--foolish--” finished Margaret. Her voice broke unaccustomedly. “It’s wonderful. Gregory will be a strange husband but if she shares him with Ireland and--oh, it’s rather perfect. And so all that nonsense about Gage being involved--” “Was nonsense.” Margaret did not ask further about Gage. She reverted to Freda and Gregory. The news left her marveling, an envy that was wonder in her remarks. She made no comparisons between Freda and herself and yet it was clear that Freda wrought herself to another phase--a step on towards some solution of thought. Helen urged her to come to dinner. “I’d rather not, I think. I’ll have a rest perhaps.” “Then you’ll go out with us for a ride to-night?” “Gage wouldn’t like it, would he?” “He suggested your coming to dinner, my dear.” They smiled at each other. “Then I’ll go.” She turned swiftly to Helen. “Oh, work it out if you can, Helen. Not working it out--is horrible.” CHAPTER XXIII RESPITE Freda was trying to mend a blouse. Her unskillful fingers pricked themselves and it was obvious that even her laborious efforts could do little to make the waist presentable. Its frayed cuffs were beyond repairing. However, it would do until they got to Mohawk and she could get the clothes which she had there. She had not written her mother to send her anything. Nor had she spent any of the money the Flandons had sent for such luxuries as new clothes. She had been uplifted when that check for a thousand dollars--not for six hundred--had slipped out of the envelope with Mrs. Flandon’s kind, congratulatory letter. Gregory’s three hundred had been put back in his purse and then, as it gradually came over her impractical mind that such a sum was totally inadequate to their need she had told him that she had some money of her own--a little reserve which had been sent to her. Naturally he had assumed her father had sent it and later she thought she would tell him that it was a debt they had assumed and make arrangements for paying it. Not now. He must not worry now about the money. She looked across the room at him--their shabby little hotel room, with its lace curtains pinned back for air and the shaky table desk dragged up before the window. He had not been quite fit enough to travel when they left the hospital, and she had insisted that he must try his strength before they made the journey to Mohawk, the first lap on the way back to Ireland. How eager he was to be off now--how impossible it was to check him! She forgot the blouse and sat looking at him, sitting there unconscious of her regard. His profile was outlined against the blank window opening, still so thin, and yet so restored. “It’s getting dark. You ought to stop now, Gregory. You’ll be worn out.”