It was two days after Granny’s funeral.  Ted had gone back to college.  Tony would leave for New York on the morrow.  Life cannot wait on death.  It must go on its course as inevitably as a river must go its way to the sea.

Yet to Tony it seemed sad and heartless that it should be so.  She was troubled by her selfishness, first to Granny living and now to Granny dead.  She said as much to her uncle sorrowfully.

“It isn’t really heartless or unkind,” he comforted her.  “We have to go on with our work.  We can’t lay it down or scamp it just because dear Granny’s work is done.  It is no more wrong for you to go back to your play than it is for me to go back to my doctoring.”

“I know,” sighed Tony.  “But I can’t help feeling remorseful.  I had so much time and Granny had so little and yet I wasn’t willing to give her even a little of mine.  I would have if I had known though.  I knew I was selfish but I didn’t know how selfish.  I wish you had told me, Uncle Phil.  Why didn’t you?  You told Ruth.  You let her help.  Why wouldn’t you let me?” she half reproached.

“I tried to do what was best for us all.  I wanted to find a reason for keeping Ruth with us and I did not think then and I don’t think now that it was right or necessary to keep you back for the little comfort it could have brought to Granny.  You must not worry, dear child.  The blame if there is any is mine.  I know you would have stayed if I had let you.”

Back in college Ted sorted out his personal letters from the sheaf of bills.  Among them was one from Madeline Taylor, presumably the answer to the one Ted had written her from the House on the Hill.  He stared at the envelope, dreading to open it.  He was too horribly afraid of what it might contain.  Suddenly he threw the letter down on the table and his head went down on top of it.

“I can’t do it,” he groaned.  “I can’t.  I won’t.  It’s too hard.”

But in a moment his head popped up again fiercely.

“Confound you!” he muttered.  “You can and you will.  You’ve got to.  You’ve made your bed.  Now lie on it.”  And he opened the letter.

“I can’t tell you,” wrote the girl, “how your letter touched me.  Don’t think I don’t understand that it isn’t because you love me or really want to marry me that you are asking me to do it.  It is all the finer and more wonderful because you don’t and couldn’t, ever.  You had nothing to gain—­everything to lose.  Yet you offered it all as if it were the most ordinary gift in the world instead of the biggest.

“Of course, I can’t let you sacrifice yourself like that for me.  Did you really think I would?  I wouldn’t let you be dragged down into my life even if you loved me which you don’t.  Some day you will want to marry a girl—­not somebody like me—­but your own kind and you can go to her clean because you never hurt me, never did me anything but good ever.  You lifted me up always.  But there must have been something still stronger that pulled me down.  I couldn’t stay up.  I was never your kind though I loved you just as much as if I were.  Forgive my saying it just this once.  It will be the last time.  This is really good-by.  Thank you over and over for everything,