"The—the body? Oh! I see what you mean. I—I was going to take Pat home next summer; this summer—but——"
"Perhaps we can arrange to have the body remain here in Chicago until you make plans."
"Oh! if you only could." Joan looked her gratitude.
And so Patricia Leigh was laid to rest in the vault of strangers until the girl who had loved her could realize the thing that had overtaken her.
In the lonely rooms the empty stillness acted like a drug upon Joan. She mechanically performed the small services she used to perform so gladly for Patricia. She held Cuff in her arms as she repeated:
"It cannot be, Cuff, dear, it cannot! Such a terrible thing couldn't happen—not without warning. She will come back; she will, Cuff—please don't look so sad!"
It was three weeks after Patricia went that Cuff met Joan as she entered the room—with Patricia's slippers which he had found where Joan had hidden them! The sight of the pathetic little figure touched something in Joan and it sprang to hurting, suffering life.
For hours the girl wept in the dark rooms. She begged for death; anything to dull forever the pain that she could not understand. But the grief saved her and she began to think for herself, since no one was there to think for her. The city was full of sickness and death. Those who could, must do for themselves. Joan had not written home; she wondered what she had done in all the ages since Pat went.
All Patricia's small affairs were in order. Her money and Joan's were banked under both names, and the dreary little home was but an empty shell.
"I've failed—utterly," the girl sobbed over Cuff in her arms; "I told Aunt Dorrie when I found that out—I would go to her."