Her life had been a simple one on the whole, but one requiring from early girlhood the constant use of her faculties.  Whatever help she had had was gained from the dependence of others upon her, not hers upon them.  She was so strong and sweet-souled that to give was a joy, it was a joy too, for them that received.  That she was ever tired and longed for strong arms to uphold her rarely occurred to any one except, perhaps, William Truedale, the invalid uncle of Conning.

At this juncture of Lynda’s career, she shrank from William Truedale as she never had before.  Had Conning died, she knew she would never have seen the old man again.  She believed that his incapacity for understanding Conning—­his rigid, unfeeling dealing with him—­had been the prime factor in the physical breakdown of the younger man.  All along she had hoped and believed that her hold upon old William Truedale would, in the final reckoning, bring good results; for that reason, and a secret one that no one suspected, she kept to her course.  She paid regular visits to the old man—­made him dependent upon her, though he never permitted her to suspect this.  Always her purpose had centred upon Con, who had, at first, appealed to her loyalty and justice, but of late to something much more personal and tender.

The day’s work was done and the workshop, in which the girl sat, was beginning to look shadowy in the far corners where evidences of her profession cluttered the dim spaces.  She was an interior decorator, but of such an original and unique kind that her brother explained her as a “Spiritual and Physical Interpreter.”  She had learned her trade, but she had embellished it and permitted it to develop as she herself had grown and expanded.

Lynda looked now at her wrist-watch; it was four-thirty.  The last mail delivery had brought a short but inspiring note from Con—­per Dr. McPherson.

“I’ve got my grip again, Lynda!  The day brings appetite and strength; the night, sleep!  I wonder whether you know what that means?  I begin to believe I am reverting to type, as McPherson would say, and I’m intensely interested in finding out—­what type?  Whenever I think of study, I have an attack of mental indigestion.  There is only one fellow creature to share my desolation but I am never lonely—­never lacking employment.  I’m busy to the verge of exhaustion in doing nothing and getting well!”

Lynda smiled.  “So he’s not going to die!” she murmured; “there’s no use in punishing Uncle William any longer.  I’ll go up and have dinner with him!”

The decision made, and Conning for the moment relegated to second place, Lynda rose and smiled relievedly.  Then her eyes fell upon her mother’s photograph which stood upon her desk.

“I’m going, dear,” she confided—­they were very close, that dead mother and the live, vital daughter—­“I haven’t forgotten.”

The past, like the atmosphere of the room, closed in about the girl.  She was strangely cheerful and uplifted; a consciousness of approval soothed and comforted her and she recalled, as she had not for many a day, the night of her mother’s death—­the night when she, a girl of seventeen, had had the burden of a mother’s confession laid upon her young heart....