Or he a woman and I a man. All I know is,
There were two: Love came, and there is one....”
“Don’t forget to remind me that I must tell him I am happy,” Betty would say.... When a letter was finally finished and sealed, she would lean back, shutting her eyes with a sigh, saying: “Now read me his that came to-day and yesterday.”... And afterward: “Isn’t it wonderful, Helen, dear? Isn’t it quite wonderful? You are so dear to understand.”
“Self-destruction is the first danger,” the Doctor had said in the early days. “That’s why she should be in a sanatorium under professional vigilance. Each case is individual. She might take a sudden dislike to the saintliest of nurses—even to you. The fever will not last, but it is a long battle. Shock, overwork, a terrible disappointment—such are the causes. Singular sweetness of disposition, as in this case, is very rare. The thing that goes with this usually is ‘the frozen stare’—hours motionless, looking at the wall——”
Morning’s letters were like white-hot fragments from his forge—roughly fashioned, but still seething with force. Helen Quiston felt that there was a splendid singing in that forge; that a man’s voice attuned with God and the world was raised in the morning; that silence drew on as the concentration of the task deepened; that there was singing in the evening again. Aliment for the soul of the music teacher, these letters. She would have fought to obey Betty Berry against the will of the Doctor and nurse had it been necessary.
One of these September-morning letters was particularly joyous with enthusiasm for Betty Berry’s gift to him. He told again how it wove into, beautified and energized his work.
“Literally I thank the stars for you,” Helen Quiston read. “Sometimes it comes to me—as if straight from you—strength that I feel with my limbs, strength that means health. It surges through my veins like magic—so that my eyes smart with tears. I speak your name again and again in thankfulness for love fresh every day, and for the pity for men in my heart——”
Betty was not following. It was frequently so in the first reading.
“Free,” she repeated softly, from a thought of yesterday’s letter. “He said I was free. He said I never explained——”