volume I needed to impress Mr. Maxwell that I was reading something

very profound and needed all my wits about me.

Returning to my chair by the fire I sat down and opened my book, but I was in nowise disappointed by finding that the leaves had never been cut. There was a heavy pearl-and-silver paper-cutter lying on the table near by, but I did not take the trouble to reach for it. What did I care for a lot of prehistoric teeth and toe-nails dug up and brought forward to prove that before "Adam delved and Eve span" the baboon was a gentleman?

Mr. Maxwell continued to stare into the fire, and I do not believe he ever glanced at the impressive three-quarters morocco binding I was holding up so persistently for him to see. After half-an-hour had been thus profitlessly spent I grew tired and decided that I would go to my room and go to bed. Morning would come the more quickly this way.

As I started to cross the room to replace the book in its niche I heard Mrs. Chalmers going up the steps again--it seemed to me fully fifty times that evening she had made pilgrimages up and down those stairs on her way to and from the invalid's room.

"Evelyn must be worse," I said aloud before I remembered that I was trying _not_ to start conversation.

"Possibly so," he answered politely.

"I believe I'll go now and see if I can do anything to help Mrs. Chalmers; she must be worn out."

I put the Huxley back where he belonged and had turned again to wish Mr. Maxwell good night, when I found that he had at last unfastened his eyes from the bright fire and was looking toward me appealingly.

"Miss Fielding," he began with an unwonted timidity.

I had already opened the door to leave the room, but I came back a few steps, leaving the door wide open; and as I did so I heard, for the fifty-first time, the sound of Mrs. Chalmers' footfalls upon the stairs. She was coming down this time.

"Yes?" I said coldly in the direction of Mr. Maxwell.

"Miss Fielding, I am going away in the morning," he said rather awkwardly, as he pushed up a chair for me again, but I did not sit down. I leaned over a little and rested my elbows against its high leather back. He stood upon the hearth-rug, and even the shaded lights of the room brought out the troubled lines on his face. "I am going away on the same train that brings Chalmers home," he repeated.

"Yes."

"And I was anxious to talk with you a little before I go," he went on with considerable hesitation. My attitude was far from being encouraging. "You seem to be on friendly terms with her still--with Sophie, I mean."

"I _am_ on friendly terms," I said rather pointedly. "I am fortunately not the kind of person who indulges in _seeming_ friendship."

"Oh, I say, Miss Fielding, don't rub it in on a fellow! Don't you see that I have been half crazy ever since I found it out? Surely you don't think that the matter hasn't made me feel worse cut up than anything that ever happened to me before! A man doesn't get over a shock like _that_!"

"Shock?"

"Certainly shock," he repeated earnestly. "If she had told me she is a horse-thief I couldn't have felt worse. Of course a man could keep up a sort of pitying friendliness after such an acknowledgment as that, but--I had intended asking her that night to marry me."

He looked at me as if he might be beseeching me to speak a word of comfort to him, but I stood there and said nothing.

"Miss Fielding, surely you understand that I couldn't marry a woman who, by her own acknowledgment, is a--a dope-fiend."

"Dope-fiend!" I gave a little shriek.

He looked at me a moment as if he thought I had lost my mind, then we were both startled by the abrupt entrance of Mrs. Chalmers at the door which I had a few minutes before left open. She had evidently heard my horrified exclamation and come in to investigate. She looked from one to the other of us inquiringly, and there was no use trying to hide the situation from her.

"Miss Fielding and I were talking about Sophie, Mrs. Chalmers," Mr. Maxwell explained after a moment of painful silence. "She acknowledged to us, Miss Fielding and me, the other night the--the truth about this unhappy condition."

"The truth?" Mrs. Chalmers' tone was questioning, although I knew that she must have heard my startled cry as I repeated the hideous word he had used a moment before.

"It was the night that we stayed away from the ball--we three--and we found the evidence in her bag. She acknowledged that it was true. I had expected to ask her to marry me that night--but she is a drug-fiend."

Mrs. Chalmers started, but she did not speak. She made no effort to correct him.

"So of course I am leaving in the morning. I should have gone long ago, but--"

He looked at Richard's mother, who stood in the center of the room, directly beneath the chandelier. The light shone down on her soft white hair and changed it into a veritable crown of glory. She moved her crown slightly as she nodded an assent to his suggestion of leaving in the morning, but she did not lift a finger to detain him, nor to set him right in regard to Sophie. Could it be that her desire to get Evelyn married off to him was going to carry her to such lengths as this? It seemed so; and I caught myself wondering quickly if in so doing she might be carrying out a command of Richard's. Likely he was very positive in bidding her keep Sophie's secret, or in impressing it upon her that Evelyn ought to be suitably married. In either case she would be mortally afraid to speak--she would _not_ speak. Then quickly upon the heels of this came the knowledge that if she did not speak it was my place to do so, for I knew the truth as well as she did--but it might make Richard angry! It would be sure to if he had given commands that the secret should be kept! I might even lose him--

"That train leaves at six-thirty, I believe?"

Again he looked at Mrs. Chalmers and she again nodded her head. But she did not speak.

"Then I shall not have an opportunity of seeing you in the morning," and he walked over and shook hands with his hostess, making his adieus in a wretchedly forced way.

She shook hands with him and allowed him to pass on to me. I gave him my hand in a mechanical fashion, and my eyes were fixed upon Mrs. Chalmers' face. She was evidently frightened at the thought of the thing she was doing; but she was just as evidently going to see it through.

"Good-by, Miss Fielding," Mr. Maxwell said simply, then turned toward the door.

I was still looking at her as I heard the sound of his hand upon the door-knob, but as I realized in that instant that he was really _going_ and that neither of us had lifted a finger to set him right, a sudden power over which it seemed that I had no control came and caught me, almost physically forcing me out of my place. I ran across the room.

"Mr. Maxwell!" I called.

He came back a few steps and stood facing us.

"You were leaving--that is, we were about to let you leave--under a false impression," I stammered breathlessly, all the time a sense of my doing something very much out of place strong upon me.

"False impression?" His eyes were glittering feverishly.

"Yes. It is true that we found the--the thing you mentioned in Sophie's bag that night, but she is no--dope-fiend."

He stood still as if he were petrified.

"Physicians carry those things in instrument cases," I went on, feeling that my explanation sounded very tame and inadequate. "Physicians carry them and so do _nurses_."

He looked at me a moment in utter bewilderment, then, slowly, comprehension dawned in his eyes. Even the understanding was going to be bitter to him, for there would be the humiliating confession that he would have to make to her that he had misjudged her.

As I said the word "nurses" Mrs. Chalmers moved a step forward and held up a warning hand.

"Ann," she exclaimed in a frightened whisper, "Richard said that this affair was _not_ to be mentioned."

"A professional nurse!" Mr. Maxwell cried, his face lighting up as a hundred hazy memories came flooding over him. "In El Paso--my God! _Of course!_"

He came up to me and caught my arm.

"This is what you mean?" he asked.

Mrs. Chalmers' eyes were fixed on me in a kind of fascinated wonder. How _could_ any one go against Richard's expressed wish? But my own eyes were meeting hers steadily as I turned to answer Mr. Maxwell's pleading question.

"Yes, that is what I mean. Sophie belongs to the great army of the Red Cross!"