I saw Katherine look at Dr. Pettit, as if for permission, and the young physician’s lips form the words, “Tell her.”

“No, dear.  Jack isn’t dead,” she said softly.  “He was missing for some time, and was brought into our hospital terribly wounded, but he is very much alive now, and will be here in New York in two weeks.”

I felt the pungent revivifier in Dr. Pettit’s hand steal under my nostrils again, but I pushed it aside and sat up.

“I am not at all faint,” I said abruptly, and then to Katherine Sonnot.  “Please say that over again, slowly.”

She repeated her words slowly.  “I should have waited to come over with him,” she added, “for he is still quite weak, but Dr. Braithwaite had to send some one over to attend to business for the hospital.  He selected me, and so I had to come on earlier.”

So it was true, then, this miracle of miracles, this return of the dead to life!  Jack, the brother-cousin on whom I had depended all my life, was still in the same world with me!  Some of the terrible burden I had been bearing since Dicky’s disappearance slipped away from me.  If anyone in the world could solve the mystery of Dicky’s actions, it would be Jack Bickett.

Dr. Pettit’s voice broke into my reverie.  I saw that Lillian and Katherine Sonnot were deep in conversation.  The young physician and I were far enough away from them so that there was no possibility of his low tones being heard.  He bent over my chair, and his eyes were burning with a light that terrified me.

“Tell me,” he commanded, “do you want your husband back again.  Take your time in answering.  I must know.”

There was something in his voice that compelled obedience.  I leaned back in my chair and shut my eyes, while I looked at the question he had put me fairly and squarely.

The question seemed to echo in my ears.  I was surprised at myself that I did not at once reply with a passionate affirmative.  Surely I had suffered enough to welcome Dicky’s return at any time.

Ah! there was the root of the whole thing.  I had suffered, how I had suffered at Dicky’s hands!  As my memory ran back through our stormy married life, I wondered whether it were wise—­even though it should be proved to me that Dicky had not gone away with Grace Draper—­to take up life with my husband again.

And then, woman-like, all the bitter recollections were shut out by other memories which came thronging into my brain, memories of Dicky’s royal tenderness when he was not in a bad humor, of his voice, his smile, his lips, his arms around me, I knew, although my reason dreaded the knowledge, that unless my husband came back to me, I should never know happiness again.

I opened my eyes and looked steadily at the young physician.

“Yes, God help me.  I do!” I said.

Dr. Pettit winced as if I had struck him.  Then he said gravely: 

“Thank you for your honesty, and believe that if there be any way in which I can serve you, I shall not hesitate to take it.”