misery on you. It’s time I retired, all right, when I do things like that — even if my son was supposed to be fatally injured. Can you ever forgive me?”

A year of misery! Valancy smiled a tortured smile as she thought of all the happiness Dr. Trent’s mistake had bought her. But she was paying for it now — oh, she was paying. If to feel was to live she was living with a vengeance.

She let Dr. Trent examine her and answered all his questions. When he told her she was fit as a fiddle and would probably live to be a hundred, she got up and went away silently. She knew that there were a great many horrible things outside waiting to be thought over. Dr. Trent thought she was odd. Anybody would have thought, from her hopeless eyes and woebegone face, that he had