"Nevertheless, you must try to put him wholly out of your mind and heart," Saunders urged. "You deserve happiness, and this thing must not kill your chances for it. Time will help." "Isn't it queer?" she sighed; "but in moments of deepest sorrow we don't want Time, God, or anything else to take our grief away. Really, I feel to-night like an invisible thing crushed out of its body and left intact to float forever in pitiless space." He led her to the gate and opened it. "You must not indulge such weird thoughts," he said, his features set in a mask of tense inner pain. "You must go to bed and try to sleep." "Sleep!" she laughed, harshly. "I'll have to wake. The happy chickens, ducks, turkeys, and twittering, chirping birds will rouse me at sun-up. I must teach to-morrow. I must answer questions about grammar, history, geography, and arithmetic. I must correct compositions, write on a blackboard with chalk, point to dots on maps, scold little ones, reprove big ones, talk to parents, and through it all _think, think, think!_ I am Dolly Drake. Do you know, Mr. Saunders, the queerest thing to me in all the world is that I am Dolly Drake? Sometimes I pronounce the name in wonder, as if I had never heard it before. I seem to have been a thousand persons in former periods." "Dolly, listen." Saunders bent till his face was close to hers. "I am your friend. I shall be true to you forever and ever. From now on nothing else on earth can be of so much importance to me as your welfare. To help you shall be my constant aim." "I know it, dear, sweet friend." The words bubbled from a swelling sob. "And oh, it is sweet and comforting at a time like this! Don't--don't stop me." And therewith she raised his hand, pressed her lips upon it, and turned quickly away. PART II CHAPTER I Five years passed. Again it was summer. Mostyn with his wife and his only child, Richard, Jr., lived in the Mitchell mansion, which, save for a new coat of paint, was unchanged. Mostyn himself was considerably altered in appearance. There were deeper lines in his face; he was thinner, more given to nervousness and loss of sleep; his hair was turning gray; he had been told by his doctor that he worried too much and that he must check the tendency.