weak to be out alone; and in this bitter cold!  Her jacket was very thin.  She’s just in the condition to get pneumonia.  I’m all broken up because I thought she was sound asleep.  She left a little note for me, with a pin she wanted me to keep, and five dollars to pay for her room.  You see she got the notion from what that girl said that she was on charity in that room and she wouldn’t stay.  I thought you’d want me to let you know!”

There was almost a sob in the nurse’s voice as she ended.  Courtland’s heart sank.

Poor Gila!  She hadn’t understood.  She had meant well, but hadn’t known how!  Poor fool he, that had asked her to go!  She had never had experience with sorrow and poverty.  How could she be expected to understand?

His anger rose as he listened to a few more details concerning Gila’s remarks.  Of course the nurse was exaggerating, but how crude of Gila!  Where were her woman’s intuitions?  Her finer sensibilities?  Where indeed?  But, after all, perhaps the nurse had not understood fully.  Perhaps she had taken offense and misconstrued Gila’s intended kindness!  Well, the main thing was that Bonnie was gone and must be hunted up.  It wouldn’t do to leave her without friends, sick and weak, this cold night.  She had, of course, gone home to her room.  He could easily find her.  He wouldn’t mind going out, though he had intended doing other things that evening; but he had undertaken this job and he must see it through.  Then there was that telegram from Mother Marshall!  And her letter on the way!  Too bad!  Of course he must make Bonnie go back to the hospital.  He would have no trouble in coaxing her back when she knew how she had distressed them all.

“I’ll go right down to her old place and see if she’s there,” he told the nurse.  “She has probably gone back to her room.  Certainly I will insist that she return to the hospital to-night.”

As he hung up the receiver Pat touched his elbow and pointed to a messenger-boy waiting for him with a note.

It was Gila’s violet-scented missive over which she had wept those angry tears.  He signed for the letter with a frown.  Somehow the perfume annoyed him.  He put the thing in his pocket, having no patience to read it at once, and went hurriedly down the hall.

As he passed the office Courtland found a letter in his box, noting with a sort of comfort that it bore a Western postmark.  As he waited for his trolley at the corner, he reflected how strange it was that this young woman, whom he had never seen nor heard of before, should suddenly be flung thus upon his horizon and seem, in a measure, his responsibility.  He had been shaking free from that sense of accountability since she had been reported getting better; and especially since he had put her upon the hearts of Mother Marshall and Gila.  Gila!  How the thought of her annoyed just now!

In the trolley he opened Mother Marshall’s letter and read, marveling at the revelation of motherhood it contained.  Motherhood and fatherhood!  How beautiful!  A sort of Christ-mother and Christ-father, these two who had been bereft of their own, were willing to be!  And Bonnie!  How she needed them—­and had gone before she knew!  He must persuade her to go to Mother Marshall!  For, after all, this whole bungle was his fault.  If he had never tried to tole Gila into it this wouldn’t have happened.