Kate's features tightened, and she looked at him defiantly. "It isn't what you think. I offered to marry him, but he wouldn't let me." "What, let a woman marry a wreck like me!" exclaimed Rogers. "No, she's going as a nurse. I've begged her not to go, but she insists." "Why shouldn't I?" Kate asked, still with her straight, defiant look full on David. "My father's now in an asylum. Mr. Rogers needs me: he'll be lonely--he ought to have someone to take care of him. I know something about nursing. Why shouldn't I?" David looked at her slight, rigidly erect figure, standing with one hand on the back of Rogers's chair, and tried to find words for the feelings that rushed up from his heart. But before he could speak she said abruptly, "Good night," and, very pale, marched past David and out of the room. The following afternoon, as David was helping Rogers with the last of the packing for the western trip, which was to be begun that night, a messenger brought him a letter. He looked at the "St. John's Hospital" printed in one corner of the envelope in some surprise before he opened the letter. It read: "DEAR SIR:-- "There has just been brought here, fatally injured from being run down by an express wagon, a woman whose name seems to be Lillian Drew, judging from a packet of old letters found on her person. As your address was the only one about her, I am sending you this notice on the possibility that you may be an interested party." The note was signed "James Barnes, House Surgeon." David's first thought was, Morton's letters have been read and the secret has begun to come out! For a space he did not know whether this was a hope or a fear. On the way to the hospital it was of the glory that would follow this disclosure, and not of the disaster, that he thought. He saw his name cleared, himself winning his way unhampered into honour, free to marry Helen--he saw a long stretch of happiness in work and in love. On reaching the hospital he was led to a small room adjoining the operating-room. Here he found Dr. Barnes, a young fellow of twenty-five, shirt sleeves rolled above his elbows, aproned in a rubber sheet, head swathed in gauze. He was beginning to wash his hands at an iron sink. "Are you a near friend or relative?" Dr. Barnes asked after David had introduced himself. "An acquaintance," David answered. "Then I can break the news point-blank. She died a few minutes ago." David hardly knew what the young surgeon was saying--his mind was all on the letters. "It's the old, old story," added the surgeon, with a shrug. "Intoxicated--got in the way of a truck--a cracked skull. I've been trying to do what I could for her"--he nodded toward the open door of the operating-room,--"but she died under the operation." "In your note," David said as steadily as he could, "you mentioned some letters."