She sprang up; she had forgotten to get supper. When she took the food upstairs, Preston was dragging himself about the room. He was excited, and anxious to talk. "Did that doctor fix me up? I don't remember seeing him in the hospital." "He operated when you were received. He left the next day," she answered. "It must have been a neat job. I guess I was in a pretty tough state," he mused more quietly. "How did he happen to look me up?" "I met him accidentally in the park," she explained briefly, anxious to have done with the subject. "He offered to come back with me to see you. Perhaps," she added more bitterly, "he wanted to see what he had done." "I suppose he knows?" She nodded. "Well, I can't see why he bothers around. I don't want his attentions." As she prepared to leave the room, after pulling down the shades and opening the bed, he said apologetically: "It was pretty good of you to take me in after--I have treated you badly, Alves. But it's no use in going back over that. I guess I was made so. There are lots of men like that, or worse." "I suppose so," she assented coldly. "Why are you so stiff with me? You hardly look at me, and you touch me as if I were a piece of dirt. Supposing I take a brace and we start over, somewhere else? I am tired of knocking round. Come over and kiss me, won't you?" Mrs. Preston paused in her work, the color mounting in her face. At first she made no reply, but as she crossed to the door, she said in a cool, distant tone: "I don't think I shall ever kiss you again or let you touch me, if I can help it. Do you happen to remember where I saw you last--I mean before I found you in the street--six months ago?" His face grew troubled, as if he were trying to recollect. "Oh! that woman? Well, that's past." "Yes, that woman. I took you here," she continued, her full voice gathering passion, "because you are helpless and an outcast. And because I had taken you before, ignorantly, I feel bound to defend you as you never defended _me_. But I am not bound to do more, and you have sense enough--" "You were ready enough to bind yourself, if I remember." She answered meekly: "I can't think it was the same woman who did that--who was blind and cheap enough to do that. Something has shown me that I am other than the foolish creature you took so easily with a marriage ring, because you could not have her in an easier way! But the old, silly country girl has gone and left me this----Why did it have to be?" she exclaimed more incoherently. "Why did you not let me read what you are? I had only a few wretched weeks to learn you--and I was ignorant and foolish and young. You had me helpless at Barrington! Was it such a clever thing to cheat a girl from a Wisconsin village?" Preston answered apologetically,-- "Well, I married you."