"I may go with a patient. Have you heard of the trouble they're in at the Clarkes'?"

"No."

"It's Mr. Mac. He's got tuberculosis, and they are taking him out to the coast for a year. They want me to go along."

Dan's face hardened.

"So it's Mac Clarke still?" he asked bitterly.

His tone stung Nance to the quick, and she wheeled on him indignantly.

"See here, Dan! I've got to put you straight on a thing or two. Where can we go to have this business out?"

He led her across the hall to his own small office and closed the door.

"I'm going to tell you something," she said, facing him with blazing eyes, "and I don't care a hang whether you believe it or not. I never was in love with Mac Clarke. From the day you left this factory I never saw or wrote to him until he was brought to the hospital last July, and I was put on the case. I didn't have anything more to do with him than I did with you. I guess you know how much that was!"

"What about now? Are you going west with him?"

Dan confronted her with the same stern inquiry in his eyes that had shone there the day they parted, in this very place, five years ago.

"I don't know whether I am or not!" cried Nance, firing up. "They've done everything for me, the Clarkes have. They think his getting well depends on me. Of course that's rot, but that's what they think. As for Mr. Mac himself--"

"Is he still in love with you?"

At this moment a boy thrust his head in the door to say that Dr. Adair had telephoned for Miss Molloy to come by the hospital before she returned to Hillcrest.

Nance pulled on her gloves and, with chin in the air, was departing without a word, when Dan stopped her.

"I'm sorry I spoke to you like that, Nance," he said, scowling at the floor. "I've got no right to be asking you questions, or criticizing what you do, or where you go. I hope you'll excuse me."

"You _have_ got the right!" declared Nance, with one of her quick changes of mood. "You can ask me anything you like. I guess we can always be friends, can't we?"

"No," said Dan, slowly, "I don't think we can. I didn't count on seeing you like this, just us two together, alone. I thought you'd be married maybe or moved away some place."

It was Nance's time to be silent, and she listened with wide eyes and parted lips.

"I mustn't see you--alone--any more, Nance," Dan went on haltingly. "But while we are here I want to tell you about it. Just this once, Nance, if you don't mind."

He crossed over and stood before her, his hands gripping a chair back.

"When I went away from here," he began, "I thought you had pa.s.sed me up for Mac Clarke. It just put me out of business, Nance. I didn't care where I went or what I did. Then one night in Cincinnati I met Birdie, and she was up against it, too--and--"

After all he couldn't make a clean breast of it! Whatever he might say would reflect on Birdie, and he gave the explanation up in despair. But Nance came to his rescue.

"I know, Dan," she said. "Mrs. Smelts told me everything. I don't know another fellow in the world that would have stood by a girl like you did Birdie. She oughtn't have let you marry her without telling you."

"I think she meant to give me my freedom when the baby came," said Dan.

"At least that was what she promised. I couldn't have lived through those first months of h.e.l.l if I hadn't thought there was some way out.

But when the baby came, it was too late. Her mind was affected, and by the law of the State I'm bound to her for the rest of her life."

"Do you know--who--who the baby's father is, Dan?"

"No. She refused from the first to tell me, and now I'm glad I don't know. She said the baby was like him, and that made her hate it. That was the way her trouble started. She wouldn't wash the little chap, or feed him, or look after him when he was sick. I had to do everything. For a year she kept getting worse and worse, until one night I caught her trying to set fire to his crib. Of course after that she had to be sent to the asylum, and from that time on, Ted and I fought it out together.

One of the neighbors took charge of him in the day, and I wrestled with him at night."

"Couldn't you put him in an orphan asylum?"

Dan shook his head.

"No, I couldn't go back on him when he was up against a deal like that. I made up my mind that I'd never let him get lonesome like I used to be, with n.o.body to care a hang what became of him. He's got my name now, and he'll never know the difference if I can help it."

"And Birdie? Does she know you when you go to see her?"

"Not for two years now. It's easier than when she did."

There was silence between them; then Nance said:

"I'm glad you told me all this, Dan. I--I wish I could help you."

"You can't," said Dan, sharply. "Don't you see I've got no right to be with you? Do you suppose there's been a week, or a day in all these years that I haven't wanted you with every breath I drew? The rest was just a nightmare I was living through in order to wake up and find you. Nance--I love you! With my heart and soul and body! You've been the one beautiful thing in my whole life, and I wasn't worthy of you. I can't let you go!

I--Oh, G.o.d! what am I saying? What right have I--Don't let me see you again like this, Nance, don't let me talk to you--"

He stumbled to a chair by the desk and buried his head in his arms. His breath came in short, hard gasps, with a long agonizing quiver between, and his broad shoulders heaved. It was the first time he had wept since that night, so long ago, when he had sat in the gutter in front of Slap Jack's saloon and broken his heart over an erring mother.

For one tremulous second Nance hovered over him, her face aflame with sympathy and almost maternal pity; then she pulled herself together and said brusquely:

"It's all right, Danny. I understand. I'm going. Good-by."

And without looking back, she fled into the hall and down the steps to the waiting motor.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII

NANCE COMES INTO HER OWN

For two hours Nance was closeted with Dr. Adair in his private office, and when she came out she had the look of one who has been following false trails and suddenly discovers the right one.

"Don't make a hasty decision," warned Dr. Adair in parting. "The trip with the Clarkes will be a wonderful experience; they may be gone a year or more, and they'll do everything and see everything in the approved way. What I am proposing offers no romance. It will be hard work and plenty of it. You'd better think it over and give me your answer to-morrow."

"I'll give it to you now," said Nance. "It's yes."

He scrutinized her quizzically; then he held out his hand with its short, thick, surgeon's fingers.

"It's a wise decision, my dear," he said. "Say nothing about it at present. I will make it all right with the Clarkes."