But now he was to take up again the burden which he had dropped.  He was to consider his problem from a new angle.  How could he bring Jean here?  How could he let her clear young eyes rest on that which he and his mother had seen?  How could he set, as it were, all of this sordidness against her sweetness?  Money could, of course, do much.  But his promise held him to watchfulness, to brooding care, to residence beneath this roof.  His bride would be the General’s daughter, she would live in the General’s house, she would live, too, beneath the shadow of the General’s tragic fault.

Yet—­she was a brave little thing.  He comforted himself with that.  And she loved him.  He slept at last with a desperate prayer on his lips that some new vision might be granted him on the morrow.

But the first news that came over the telephone was of Jean’s flitting.  “Daddy wants me to go with him to our old place in Maryland.  He has some business which takes him there, and we shall be gone two days.”

“Two days?”

“Yes.  We are to motor up.”

“Can’t I go with you?”

“I think—­Daddy wants me to himself.  You won’t mind, Derry—­some day you’ll have me all the time.”

“But I need you now, dearest.”

“Do you really,” delightedly.  “It doesn’t seem as if you could—­”

“If you knew how much.”

She could not know.  He hung up the receiver.  The day stretched out before him, blank.

But it passed, of course.  And Hilda, having slept her allotted number of hours, was up in time to superintend the serving of the General’s dinner.  Later, Derry stopped at the door to say that he was going to the theater and might be called there.  The General, propped against his pillows and clothed in a gorgeous mandarin coat, looked wrinkled and old.  The ruddiness had faded from his cheeks, and he was much thinner.

Hilda, sitting by the little table, showed all the contrast of youth and bloom.  Her long hands lay flat on the table.  Derry had a fantastic feeling, as if a white cat watched him under the lamp.

“Are you going alone, son?” the General asked.

“Yes.”

“Why don’t you take a girl?” craftily.

Derry smiled.

“The only girl I should care to take is out of town.”

The white cat purred.  “Lucky girl to be the only one.”

Derry’s manner stiffened.  “You are good to think so.”

After Derry had gone, Hilda said, “You see, it is Jean McKenzie.  The Doctor said that he and Jean would be up in Maryland for a day or two.  She has a good time.  She doesn’t know what it means to be poor, not as I know it.  She doesn’t know what it means to go without the pretty things that women long for.  You wouldn’t believe it, General, but when I was a little girl, I used to stand in front of shop windows and wonder if other girls really wore the slippers and fans and parasols.  And when I went to Dr. McKenzie’s, and saw Jean in her silk dressing gowns, and her pink slippers and her lace caps, she seemed to me like a lady in a play.  I’ve worn my uniforms since I took my nurse’s training, and before that I wore the uniform of an Orphans’ Home.  I—­I don’t know why I am telling you all this—­only it doesn’t seem quite fair, does it?”