would not be happy. I am spoiled for this life. I miss—" she hesitated there—"the mountains and the open country. I feel shut in."
She found that she was crying, had to get up and find a handkerchief, moved about the room before she could compose herself to go on. She was homesick for the West, heartsick for Tom. She dabbed at her eyes angrily. How weak and childish she was still to care so much for a man who did not care for her! She was one of the hopelessly faithful. It was awful, it was degrading, but there it was. She went back to her small desk:
"And I did love you so dreadfully, Tom! I must have, to do what I did do. If I have been unfair I am sorry, and when you want me—and I can come—you know I will."
He never answered it.
One day without warning Bessie Osborne wandered in. She went upstairs, opened Katherine's door, sauntered past the scowling nurse, and kissed the invalid.
"You're looking better," she said, lying as unconcernedly as she did everything else. "I hear Kay's back."
"Yes. She came some time ago."
"Has she left him?"
Katherine cast an agonized glance toward the nurse.
"Nora wrote her I was not well, and you know the winters out there—why, Bessie, whatever have you done to your hair?"
Bessie had taken off her hat, and not only revealed an evident intention to remain, but a head of a hue closely resembling orange.
"New color," said Bessie calmly. "I've tried everything else; this was all they had left. Well, how is Kay?"
The nurse had recovered her voice.
"Excuse me," she said, "but the doctor's orders are against visitors."
"I'm not a visitor," said Bessie, glancing at her coldly, "and if there is anything you can do conveniently for the next ten or fifteen minutes, I should like to talk to my sister-in-law."
