“Please, not now. Oh, I’m afraid——”
“Of me? You mustn’t be.”
“Not of you—of everything—Life.”
He took her hand and held it. “Is there anything else I can do for you? Everything I have is—yours, you know—if you want it.”
He had to leave her then, with a final close clasp of the hand. She saw him presently standing beside Baldy on the station platform—the center of the eyes of everybody—the great Frederick Towne!
As the city slipped away and she leaned her head against the cushions and looked out at the flying fields—it seemed a stupendous thing that a man like Towne should have laid his fortune at her feet. Yet she had no sense of exhilaration. She liked the things he had to offer—yearned for them—but she did not want him at her side.
In her sorrow her heart turned to the boy who had stumbled over the words, “If my blundering prayers will help you——”
She found herself sobbing—the first tears she had shed since the arrival of the telegram.
When she reached Chicago, her brother-in-law, Bob Heming, met her. “Judy’s holding her own,” he said, as he kissed her. “It was no end good of you to come, Janey.”
“Have you a nurse?”