It snowed persistently all day. From the chair by the window, Doctor Horton watched it falling silently, making everything beautiful as it fell,—rude wall, and gnarled tree, and scraggy, leafless bush,—and covering those low, unsightly mounds with a rich and snowy pall. He watched it until night fell and shut it from his sight.
Lilly O'Connell's was the last case. The disease seemed meantime to have spent its force, and in a few weeks the unbroken silence of midwinter rested over the drear and forlorn spot.
Doctor Horton was again at home. He was thin, and his face showed some traces of the disease from which he had just recovered, but they were slight, and such as would pass away in time. The pleasant chamber where he was sitting was filled with evidences of care and attention, for every woman in Ridgemont, old or young, desired to show in some way her admiration and esteem for the young physician. Fruit and jellies and flowers and books filled every available place.
He was seated before a cheerful fire. Upon the table by his side lay many papers and letters, the accumulation of several weeks. One letter, of a recent date, was open in his hand. A portion of it ran thus:
"* * * It has been very gay here this season, and mother and Aunt Kitty have insisted upon my going out a great deal. But I have had no heart in it, dearest, especially since I knew that you were ill. I assure you, I was almost ill myself when I heard of it. How thankful I am that you are convalescent. I long to see you so much, but Aunt Kitty does not think I ought to return before spring. Oh Roger, do you think you are much changed? * * *"
Shading his eyes with his thin hand, he sat a long time in deep thought. At last, rousing himself, he went to his desk and wrote as follows:
"My Dear Florence: I am changed; so much that you would not know me; so much that I hardly know myself; so much, indeed, that it is better we do not meet at present.
R. H."
With a smile so bitter that it quite transformed his genial, handsome face, he read and re-read these lines.
"Yes," he said aloud, "it is the right way, the only way," and he sealed and directed the letter, and went back to his reverie by the fire.