about myself.  I’ve told him that I know your family in Philadelphia, that they asked me about the chances of a position here for you as an assistant in a physician’s office, and that now you had come on to seek for such a position.  Let me know how the lie turns out.  “P.  O. BERKLEY.”

A fortnight later came her last letter: 

“DEAR MR. BERKLEY:  “I have been with Dr. Benton nearly two weeks now.  He took me at once.  He is such a good man!  But—­I don’t know—­sometimes he looks at me and looks at me as though he suspected what I am—­and I feel my cheeks getting hot, and I can scarcely speak for nervousness; and then he always smiles so pleasantly and speaks so courteously that I know he is too kind and good to suspect.

“I hold sponges and instruments in minor operations, keep the office clean, usher in patients, offer them smelling salts and fan them, prepare lint, roll bandages—­and I know already how to do all this quite well.  I think he seems pleased with me.  He is so very kind to me.  And I have a little hall bedroom in his house, very tiny but very neat and clean; and I have my meals with his housekeeper, an old, old woman who is very deaf and very pleasant.

“I don’t go out because I don’t know where to go.  I’m afraid to go near the Canterbury—­afraid to meet anybody from there.  I think I would die if any man I ever saw there ever came into Dr. Benton’s office.  The idea of that often frightens me.  But nobody has come.  And I sometimes do go out with Dr. Benton.  He is instructing a class of ladies in the principles of hospital nursing, and lately I have gone with him to hold things for him while he demonstrates.  And once, when he was called away suddenly, I remained with the class alone, and I was not very nervous, and I answered all their questions for them and showed them how things ought to be done.  They were so kind to me; and one very lovely girl came to me afterward and thanked me and said that she, too, had worked a little as a nurse for charity, and asked me to call on her.

  “I was so silly—­do you know I couldn’t see her for
  the tears, and I couldn’t speak—­and I couldn’t let go
  of her hands.  I wanted to kiss them, but I was ashamed.

  “Some day do you think I might see you again?  I
  am what you have asked me to be.  I never wanted to be
  anything else.  They will not believe that at home because
  they had warned me, and I was such a fool—­and perhaps
  you won’t believe me—­but I didn’t know what I
  was doing; I didn’t want to be what I became—­This is
  really true, Mr. Berkley.  Sometime may I see you
  again? 
  Yours sincerely,
    “LETITIA A. LYNDEN.”

He had replied that he would see her some day, meaning not to do so.  And there it had rested; and there, stretched on his sofa, he rested, the sneer still edging his lips, not for her but for himself.