There was a silent interval.  They had reached the brow of the bluff and, coming into the teeth of the wind, she dipped her head and ran to gain the shelter of the pavilion.  Then, while she gathered her breath, leaning a little on the parapet and looking off to the broad sweep of running sea, Foster said:  “It was that debt that worried me up there in the wilderness.  You had referred to it the evening after the theater, a week before I went away.  You called it a debt of honor.  You laughed at the time, but you warned me it was the hardest kind of debt because an obligation to a friend kept one continually paying interest in a hundred small ways.  You said it was like selling yourself on a perpetual instalment plan.  That wasn’t the first time you had spoken of it, but you seemed to feel the pressure more that night and, afterwards, up there in the north, I got to thinking it over.  I blamed myself for not finding out the truth.  I was afraid the loan was Frederic Morganstein’s.”  He paused and drew back a step with a quick uplift of his aggressive chin.  “Was it?” he asked.

“Yes.”  She drew erect and turned from the parapet to meet his look.  “My note came into his hands.  But I see I must explain.  It began in a yearly subscription to the Orthopedic hospital; the one, you know, for little deformed children.  I was very interested when the movement started; I sang at concerts, danced sometimes you remember, to help along the fund.  And I endowed a little bed.  David always seemed just on the brink of riches in those days, his letters were full of brilliant predictions, but when the second annual payment fell due, I had to borrow of Elizabeth.  She suggested it.  She herself was interested deeper, financially, than I. All the people we knew, who ever gave to charity, were eager to help the Orthopedic; the ladies at the head were our personal friends; the best surgeons were giving their services and time.  I hadn’t the courage to have my subscription discontinued so soon, and I expected to cancel the debt when I heard again from David.  But the next spring it was the same; I borrowed again from Elizabeth.  After that, when she wanted to apply the sum to the hospital building fund, Mrs. Feversham advanced the money, and I gave my note.  My bed, then, was given to a little, motherless boy.  He had the dearest, most trusting smile and great, dark eyes; the kind that talk to you.  And his father had deserted him.  That seems incredible; that a man can leave his own child, crippled, ill, unprovided for; but it does happen, sometimes.”  She paused to steady her voice and looked off again from the parapet.  “The surgeons were greatly interested in the case,” she went on.  “They were about to perform an unusual operation.  All his future depended on it.  So—­I let my subscription run on; so much could happen in a year.  The operation was a perfect success, and when the boy was ready to go, one of the Orthopedic women adopted him.  He is the happiest, sturdiest little fellow now.