If Kate had been crying, the only evidence was a hasty powdering which left streaks of white and pink before her ears. On first glance, Eleanor marvelled at her appearance of control, at the lack of emotion in her face. But insight rather than conscious vision told Eleanor of the currents which were running under that mask. At the bottom Eleanor detected a fear which was not only apprehension of the news from Bertram Chester, but also a cowardly shrinking from the situation. She fancied that she could even trace Kate's consideration of the proper shade of acting in the circumstances. All this in the moment before Kate sprang up the steps and asked: "Oh, will he live?" A baser nerve in Eleanor quivered with the desire to be cruel. She had to put it down before she could tell the simple truth. One little corner of Kate's mouth quivered and jerked for a second under her teeth before she caught herself and resumed the impersonation of a solicitous friend. "Tell me all about it," she said. "Ah, I am too tired!" Nevertheless, Eleanor did manage a plain tale, ending with the nurse's report and with her own conviction that he would live. "Oh, of course he will live!" And then--"Who is nursing him?" She looked up on this question, which was also an appeal, a begging. "We have a nurse," answered Eleanor shortly. It gratified her a little, in her low state of consciousness, to be thus abrupt. The better part of her realized this; saw how she was wreaking the revenge of an old emotion. A reaction of generosity prompted her next words; but she spoke with an effort. "You may help if you want to. Uncle Edward must go to the ranch this week--unless--don't you want to come here and stay in my spare room?" It seemed to Eleanor that she had never made a harder sacrifice than the one which she sealed with that invitation. This, too, brought Kate out of her impersonation. Her whole figure straightened for a second, and-- "Oh, might I?" she said. "I should be very glad. Will you come up to see him--one may look in at the door. He is in Uncle Edward's spare chamber." As they threaded the involved halls of that rambling dwelling, Kate hurried on ahead. Eleanor, from the rear, threw out a word or two by way of direction. At the door, opened to get air of a dull and heavy morning, they peered into the grim order of the sick room. The nurse had already stripped it to hospital equipment. His face, refined almost into beauty by pain and low-running blood, lay tilted to one side as he slept. The nurse touched her lips. Eleanor nodded. The nurse turned back toward her patient. Eleanor dared look at Kate. Her color had changed from pale, back to the pink of life; now it was turning pale again. She noticed neither Eleanor nor the nurse; she stood as one in a universe unpeopled save by herself and another. Once, her two arms quivered with an involuntary outward motion, and once she swayed against the lintel.