To his consternation, he heard through the gloom the sound of sobbing. The nurse, he saw, after much peering, sat on a dusty chopping-block, crying unhealthily. He went up to her and seized her arm. "Have you told her?" "I can't." "My good woman, you'd better leave this afternoon." "Not"--the tone itself was firm, through the shaky sobs--"until there is some one to take my place." "I'll telegraph for some one. You shan't see her again. But I will see her at once." Then the woman's training asserted itself. She pulled herself together, with a little shake of self-disgust. "You'll do nothing of the sort. I'll attend to her until I go. It has been a long strain, and, contrary to custom, I've had no time off. I'll telegraph to the Registry myself. And if I can't manage until then, I'll resign my profession." She spoke with sturdy shame. "That's better." Withrow approved her. "I'm awfully obliged. But honestly, she has got to know. I can't stand it, skulking round, much longer. And no matter what happens to the whole boiling, I'm not going to leave without seeing her." "I'll tell her." The nurse rose and walked to the barn-door like a heroine. "But you must stay here until I come for you." "I promise. Only you must come. I give you half an hour." "I don't need half an hour, thank you." She had recovered her professional crispness. In the wide door she stopped. "It's a pity," she said irrelevantly, "that she can't see how lovely this is." Then she started for the house. "I believe you," muttered Withrow under his breath. In five minutes the nurse came back, breathless, half-running. Arnold got up from the chopping-block, startled. He believed for an instant (as he has since told me) that it was "all over." With her hand on her beating heart the woman panted out her words: "She has come downstairs in a wrapper. She hasn't been down for weeks. And she has found your hepaticas." "Oh, hell!" Withrow was honestly disgusted. He had never meant to insult Kathleen Somers with hepaticas. "Is it safe to leave her alone with them?" He hardly knew what he was saying. But it shows to what a pass Kathleen Somers had come that he could be frightened at the notion of her being left alone with a bunch of hepaticas. "She's all right, I think. She seemed to like them." "Oh, Lord!" Withrow's brain was spinning. "Here, I'll go. If she can stand those beastly flowers, she can stand me." "No, she can't." The nurse had recovered her breath now. "I'll go back and tell her, very quietly. If she could get down-stairs, she can stand it, I think. But I'll be very careful. You come in ten minutes. If she isn't fit, I'll have got her back to bed by that time."