"No, you darling, it's not. It's our same poor old world; but it'll be near heaven if you'll get well and live for me," said Justin O'Reilly. Then it seemed to the girl that she heard a very odd, choking sound, and on to her half-parted lips fell a drop of something hot. She tasted this, and found it salt. "You--you can't be crying?" she mumbled. "I am." O'Reilly answered, "crying with joy. I don't remember doing it before--in joy or sorrow. Here goes another tear! Sorry! I couldn't help spilling it on you. Shan't happen again." O'Reilly's face was close to hers. She smiled up at him. Everything seemed strange except that he should call her darling. That, somehow, was not strange at all. Nor was it strange that his head should be bent over her upturned face. Yet he said it was the same poor old world! "I thought I was dead," she explained. "I thought so, too, for a minute, and it was the worst minute and the worst thought I ever had. But you're alive. And you're going to live. I tell you that on the doctor's authority. He and the nurse are having a confab in the next room. In fact, when we saw you coming to all right, after the anaesthetic (a bullet had to come out of your poor little shoulder!) I asked them to leave me alone with you. I wanted to be the first one your eyes saw. You're going to live for me, aren't you? Because I adore you, you know!" "I know," the girl echoed, floating on a strange, bright wave of joy. "You know I adore you?" "Something told me it would come out like that," she said. "In those long days when I had to lie still in my room and listen to Kit and Churn, another voice--so different from theirs!--seemed to say it in my ear. Your message for me in the newspaper--I was sure it was for me--put it into my head. I couldn't answer. But the message was the greatest comfort! I didn't feel alone after that." "Precious one! You're a star heroine, and a martyr and a saint, and I don't know what not. But most of all, you are my life--my very life. I've had a big disappointment since I parted from you--lost a thing I'd wanted for years--lost it to Roger Sands. His revenge for--I hardly know what! Yet finding you and holding you like this shows me that nothing else matters. What's a house, anyhow, except this darling house not made with hands--your little body, house of your soul? When you know me better, could you learn to love me, do you think, if I try hard to teach you?" "Oh, but I do love you already," said Clo, as a matter of course. "Even that first night--there was something about you--I hated to cheat and rob you the way I did. And it was wonderful hearing your voice in the telephone, in Peterson's dreadful room. It wasn't only that I hoped you'd help, it was because it was you--because you were different for me from anybody else, different even from Angel." "Good Lord, I should hope so!" "And I've wanted you dreadfully ever since. That's why I thought it must be heaven when I woke up just now and saw you."