“Now you must get that wet gown off,” he said practically.  “Katie emptied nearly a gallon of water over you in her fright.”

He smiled constrainedly, and I made a brave effort to return the smile, but I could not accomplish it.  Indeed, I was glad to be able to keep back the tears, which I knew instinctively would hurt him.

He undressed me as tenderly as a woman could have done, and, wrapping a warm bathrobe over my nightdress, for I was shivering as if from a chill, tucked me in between the blankets of my bed.  Then he drew a chair to the bedside and sat down.

“Are you sure you are all right now?” he asked.  “Your color is coming back.”

“Perfectly sure,” I returned, “and I am so sorry to have made you so much trouble.”

“Don’t say that,” he returned, a trifle sharply.  “It is so meaningless.  Try to sleep a little, can’t you?”

“Not yet, Dicky,” I returned.  “I am feeling much better, however.  Of course, the shock was terrible at first, for, as you know, Jack was the only brother I ever knew.  But I am all right now and I want you to tell me how you learned the news.”

“Mrs. Stewart telephoned to me,” he said.  “It seems your cousin gave her as the ‘next of kin,’ to be notified in case of his death, and she received the notice this morning.  There was nothing but the usual official notification.”

I caught my breath, stifling the moan that rose to my lips.  Somewhere in France lay buried the tenderest heart, the manliest man God ever put into the world.  And I had sent him to his death.  Despite the comforting assurance Jack had written me, just before his departure for France, that his discovery of my marriage, with the consequent blasting of the hope he had cherished for years, had not been the cause of his sailing, I knew he would never have left me if I had not been married.

I think Dicky must have read my thoughts in my face, for, after a moment, he said gently, yet with a tenseness which told me he was putting a rigid control over his voice: 

“You must not blame yourself so harshly.  Your cousin would probably have gone to the war even if—­circumstances had been different.”

There was that in Dicky’s voice and eyes which told me that he, too, was suffering.  I gathered my strength together, made a supreme effort to put the sorrow and remorse I felt behind me until I could be alone.  I knew that I must strive at once to eradicate the false impression my husband had gained as a result of my reception of the news of my brother-cousin’s death.

So I forced my lips to words which, while not utterly false, yet did not at all reveal the truth of what I was feeling.

“I know that, Dicky,” I returned, and I tried to hold my voice to a conversational tone.  “He went with his dearest friend, a Frenchman, you know.  I had nothing to do with his going.  It isn’t that which makes me feel as I do.  It is because his death brings back my mother’s so plainly.  He was always so good to her, and she loved him so much.”