Then, less than an hour ago, she had flung out her hands toward the shadowy figure of a man walking alone by the sea, her heart aching with a great need for the love that might have been hers had she not smiled. That need, springing of her own love, had just happened. The fulfillment of it was a matter to be decided by her own conscience; but the love itself had involved no question of right. She felt a wave of sympathy for Peter. She was able to feel for him now as never before. Poor Peter, lying there alone in the hospital! How the ache, unsatisfied, ate into one. "Peter would n't tell me at first," Beatrice was running on. "His lips were as tight closed as his poor bandaged eyes." "The blindness," broke in Marjory. "That is not permanent?" "I will tell you what the doctor told me," Beatrice replied slowly. "He said that, while his eyes were badly overstrained, the seat of the trouble was mental. 'He is worrying,' he told me. 'Remove the cause of that and he has a chance.'" "So you have come to me for that?" "It seems like fate," said Peter's sister, with something of awe in her voice. "When, little by little, Peter told me of his love, I thought of only one thing: of finding you. I wanted to cable you, because I--I thought you would come if you knew. But Peter would not allow that. He made me promise not to do that. Then, as he grew stronger, and the doctor told us that perhaps an ocean voyage would help him, I wanted to bring him to you. He would not allow that either. He thought you were in Paris, and insisted that we take the Mediterranean route. Then--we happen upon you outside the hotel we chose by chance! Does n't it seem as if back of such a thing as that there must be something we don't understand; something higher than just what we may think right or wrong?" "No, no; that's impossible," exclaimed Marjory. "Why?" "Because then we'd have to believe everything that happened was right. And it is n't." "Was our coming here not right?" Marjory did not answer. "If you could have seen the hope in Peter's face when I left him!" "He does n't know!" choked Marjory. "He knows you are here, and that is all he needs to know," answered Beatrice. "If it were only as simple as that." The younger girl rose and, moving to the other's side, placed an arm over the drooping shoulders. "Marjory dear," she said. "I feel to-night more like Peter than myself. I have listened so many hours in the dark as he talked about you. He--he has given me a new idea of love. I'd always thought of love in a--a sort of fairy-book way. I did n't think of it as having much to do with everyday life. I supposed that some time a knight would come along on horseback--if ever he came--and take me off on a long holiday." Marjory gave a start. The girl was smoothing her hair.