“Well, he likes you all right,” said his mother on a long, quivering breath.  With big, coarse, tender fingers she helped Magsie with the last hooks and bands of her toilette.  “If you ain’t as pretty and dainty as a little wax doll!” she observed admiringly.  Magsie merely sighed in answer.  Wax dolls had their troubles!

But she liked the doglike devotion of Richie’s big mother, and the beautiful car—­Richie’s car.  Perhaps the hurt to her heart and her pride had altered Magsie’s sense of values.  At all events, she did not even shrink from Richie to-day.

She sat down beside the white bed, beside the bony form that the counterpane revealed in outline, and smiled at Richie’s dark, thin eager face and sunken, adoring eyes.  She laid her warm, plump little hand between his long, thin fingers.  After a while the nurse timidly suggested the detested milk; Richie drank it dutifully for Magsie.

They were left together in the cool, airy, orderly room, and in low, confidential tones they talked.  Magsie was well aware that the big doctors themselves would not interrupt this talk, that the nurses and the mother were keeping guard outside the door.  Richie was conscious of nothing but Magsie.

In this hour the girl thought of the stormy years that were past and the stormy future.  She had played her last card in the game for Warren Gregory’s love.  The letters, without an additional word, were gone to Rachael.  If Rachael chose to use them against Warren, then the road for Magsie, if long, was unobstructed.  But suppose Rachael, with that baffling superiority of hers, decided not to use them?

Magsie had seriously considered and seriously abandoned the idea of holding out several letters from the packages, but the letters, as legal documents, had no value to anyone but Rachael.  If Rachael chose to forgive and ignore the writing of them, they were so much waste paper, and Magsie had no more hold over Warren than any other young woman of his acquaintance.

But Magsie was more or less committed to a complete change.  The break with Bowman could not be avoided without great awkwardness now.  She despised herself for having so simply accepted a bank account from Warren, yet what else could she do?  Magsie had wanted money all her life, and when that money was gone—–­Richie was falling into a doze, his hand still tightly clasping hers.  She slipped to her knees beside the bed, and as he lazily opened his eyes she gave him a smile that turned the room to Heaven for him.  When a nurse peeped cautiously in, a warning nod from Magsie sent the surprised and delighted woman away again with the great news.  Mr. Gardiner was asleep!

The clock struck twelve, struck one, still Magsie knelt by the bedside, watching the sleeping face.  Outside the city was silent under the summer sun.  In the great hospital feet cheeped along wide corridors, now and then a door was opened or closed.  There was no other sound.