“Are you going to be married, Jerry?”

“Some day, I suppose.  I’m not worrying about it.  It was something to do; it kept me from—­thinking.”

The girl looked at him and something gripped her throat.  He knew!  Rose might have gone down with her father, but Jerry knew!  Nothing was any use.  She knew his rigid morality, his country-bred horror of the thing she was.  She would have to go back—­to Rose and the others.  He would never take her home.

Down at the medicine closet the Probationer was carbolising thermometers and humming a little song.  Everything was well.  The Avenue Girl was with her people and at seven o’clock the Probationer was going to the roof—­to meet some one who was sincerely repentant and very meek.

In the convalescent ward next door they were singing softly—­one of those spontaneous outbursts that have their origin in the hearts of people and a melody all their own: 

’Way down upon de S’wanee Ribber,
Far, far away,
Dere’s wha my heart is turnin’ ebber—­
Dere’s wha de old folks stay.

It penetrated back of the screen, where the girl lay in white wretchedness—­and where Jerry, with death in his eyes, sat rigid in his chair.

“Jerry?”

“Yes.”

“I—­I guess I’ve been pretty far away.”

“Don’t tell me about it!” A cry, this.

“You used to care for me, Jerry.  I’m not expecting that now; but if you’d only believe me when I say I’m sorry——­”

“I believe you, Elizabeth.”

“One of the nurses here says——­Jerry, won’t you look at me?” With some difficulty he met her eyes.  “She says that because one starts wrong one needn’t go wrong always.  I was ashamed to write.  She made me do it.”

She held out an appealing hand, but he did not take it.  All his life he had built up a house of morality.  Now his house was crumbling and he stood terrified in the wreck.  “It isn’t only because I’ve been hurt that I—­am sorry,” she went on.  “I loathed it!  I’d have finished it all long ago, only—­I was afraid.”

“I would rather have found you dead!”

There is a sort of anesthesia of misery.  After a certain amount of suffering the brain ceases to feel.  Jerry watched the white curtain of the screen swaying in the wind, settled his collar, glanced at his watch.  He was quite white.  The girl’s hand still lay on the coverlet.  Somewhere back in the numbed brain that would think only little thoughts he knew that if he touched that small, appealing hand the last wall of his house would fall.

It was the Dummy, after all, who settled that for him.  He came with his afternoon offering of cracked ice just then and stood inside the screen, staring.  Perhaps he had known all along how it would end, that this, his saint, would go—­and not alone—­to join the vanishing circle that had ringed the inner circle of his heart.  Just at the time it rather got him.  He swayed a little and clutched at the screen; but the next moment he had placed the bowl on the stand and stood smiling down at the girl.