The sparkle went out of her face.  After a moment she picked up the letter and compared the address with the writing on the card.  It was the same and, seating herself by the window, she broke the seal.  When she had read the first line under the superscription, she stopped to look at the signature.  It was Katherine Purdy.  She turned back and began again: 

“My dear Mrs. Weatherbee:

“I am the night nurse on Mr. Tisdale’s ward.  He dictated the message on his card to me, and I learned your address through ordering the violets of the Seattle florist for him.  It set me wondering whether he has ever let you know how desperate things were with him.  He is the most unselfish man I ever saw, and the bravest that ever came on this floor.  The evening he arrived the surgeons advised amputating his hand—­it was a case of blood-poisoning—­but he said, ’No, I am ready to take the risk; that right hand is more than half of me, my better half.’  He could joke, even then.  And when the infection spread to the arm, it was the same.  After that it was too late to operate; just a question of endurance.  And he could endure all right.  My, but he was patient!  I wish you could have seen him, as I did, lying here hour after hour, staring at the ceiling, asking for nothing, when every nerve in his body must have been on fire.  But he won through.  He is lying here still, weak and pale enough, but safe.

“Maybe I seem impertinent, and I suppose I am young and foolish, but I don’t care; I wouldn’t be hard as nails, like some in this clinic, if it was to cost me my diploma.  I came from the Pacific west—­I am going back there as soon as I graduate—­and a girl from there never can learn to bottle her feelings till she looks like a graven image.  Besides, I know I am writing to a western woman.  But I want to say right here he never made a confidant of me, never said one word, intentionally, about you, but there were nights when his temperature was running from a hundred and four degrees that he got to talking some.  Most of the time he was going all over that terrible trip to find poor Mr. Weatherbee, and once, when he was hunting birds along some glacier, he kept hearing David singing and calling him.  Again he was just having the best, quiet little visit with him.  My, how he loved that man!  And when it wasn’t David, it was you.  ’I know you couldn’t marry a man like Morgan,’ he said.  ’You may think so, but you will not when the time comes.’  And once it was, ’Beatrice, Beatrice, in spite of everything I can’t help believing in you.’  Then one night, his worst before the crisis, he seemed to be helping you through some awful danger, it was a storm I think, and there were wild beasts and mountains, and at last when it was all over, he said quietly:  ’You do owe your life to me, but I shall never hold you to the debt; that would be too monstrous.’  And a little later it was, ’Head high, hold fast, it will be a stiff fight, soldier.  My dear, my