“Perfect bosh!” declared Zaidos. “I’ll bet anything, anything that he never received your letter at all, or else he answered and you did not get his letter. Why didn’t you telephone him? Letters are no good.”
“I asked him to telephone me,” said Helen. “I watched that telephone for three days all the time.”
“Didn’t you leave it at all?” said Zaidos.
“Only once for an hour,” said Helen, “and then I had my own maid sit right beside it.
“That is all there is to my poor little story, John boy. Tony is somewhere in France, if he still lives, and I came out here when I could stand it no longer at home. You see I am not afraid of death because I don’t in the least care to live without Tony.”
“Well, it’s too bad,” said Zaidos. “Wish I had been there. I just know he never got your letter. I just know it!”
“The story is ended now, at any rate,” said Helen. “If Tony lives he will go back home and marry some woman who has common sense to appreciate him, and as for me, to the end of my days, I shall be just Nurse Helen.” She sighed softly, and for a moment looked into the night.
“Do you want to see him?” she asked. She drew from her uniform a slender chain with a big gold locket swinging on it. A crest was on it set with diamonds that flashed in the dim light. Zaidos looked at the open, handsome face.
“Look like him?” he asked.
“Exactly like him!” she replied.