If she isn't, she's no good! Commend me to sanity and the commonplace.

I take off my hat to it! I honour it.

God bless it! Good-night!" Siward lay still for a long while after the doctor had gone.

More than an hour had passed before he slowly sat up and groped for the telephone book, opened it, and searched in a blind, hesitating way until he found the number he was looking for.
He had never telephoned to her; he had never written her except once, in reply to her letter in regard to his mother's death--that strange, timid, formal letter, in which, grief-stunned as he was, he saw only the formality, and had answered it more formally still.

And that was all that had come of the days and nights by that northern sea--a letter and its answer, and silence.
And, thinking of these things, he shut the book wearily, and lay back in the shadow of the faded curtain, closing his sunken eyes..