“My dear, what has happened to you?” Katherine exclaimed solicitously.  “I received no answer to my letter saying I was coming home, so when I reached New York, I went to Dr. Pettit.  He thought you were at Marvin, but when he telephoned out there, Katie said you had had a terrible accident, and that you had left Marvin.  I was not quite sure, for she was half crying over the telephone, but I thought she said ’for keeps.’”

She stopped and looked at me with a hint of fright in her manner.  I knew she wanted to ask about Dicky’s absence, and did not dare to do so.

“Everything you heard is true, Katherine,” I returned, a trifle unsteadily, as her arms went around me warmly.  I was more than a trifle upset by her coming, for associated with her were memories of my brother-cousin, Jack Bickett, who had gone to the great war when he had learned that I was married, and of whose death “somewhere in France,” I had heard through Mrs. Stewart.

“Where is your husband?” Dr. Pettit demanded, and there was that in his voice which told me that he was putting an iron hand upon his own emotions.

Now the stock answer which Lillian and I returned to all inquiries of this sort was “In San Francisco upon a big commission.”  It was upon my lips, but some influence stronger than my will made me change it to the truth.

“I do not know,” I said faintly.  “He left the city very abruptly several weeks ago, sending word in a letter to Mrs. Underwood that he would never see me again.  It is a terrible mystery.”

Dr. Pettit muttered something that I knew was a bitter anathema against Dicky, and then folded his arms tightly across his chest, as if he would keep in any further comment.  But I had no time to pay any attention to him, for Katherine Sonnot was uttering words that bewildered and terrified me.

“Oh! how terrible!” she said.  “Jack will be so grieved.  He had so hoped to find you happy together when he came home.”

Was the girl’s brain turned, I wondered, because of grief for my brother-cousin’s death?  I had known before I secured the chance for her to go to France that she was romantically interested in the man who had been her brother’s comrade, although she had never seen him.  And from Jack’s letters to Mrs. Stewart, I had learned of their meeting in the French hospital, and of the acquaintance which promised to ripen—­which evidently had ripened—­into love.

I looked at her searchingly, and then I spoke, hardly able to get the words out for the wild trembling of my whole body.

“Jack grieved?” I said.  “Why!  Jack is dead!  We had the notice of his death weeks ago from his friend, Paul Caillard.”

I saw them all look at me as if frightened.  Dr. Pettit reached me first and put something under my nostrils which vitalized my wandering senses.  I straightened myself and cried out peremptorily.

“What is it, oh! what is it?”