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Show on the snowy coverlet, and the wan, shriveled face on the pillow seemed hardly human, but his eyea were bright with returning life and dawning hope. "Has the princess escaped from the tower at last? Is It really the old Madge?" he whispered, doubtfully. "It is the old Madge, dear," she answered, tears and smiles struggling for the mastery of her mobile face, in spite of the doctor's injunction as to excitement. "Mr. Anderson is downstairs. down-stairs. We are the best of friends now and he brought me here. Shall I tell him to come up?" "Not Just yet," said Jack, happily studying the face bent over him, and finding in it all he had so loved and more. The cynical curl of the lips was gone, the dewy freshness had come back to the eyes, and brought with it a sweet, grave womanliness that had never been there before. "It is worth far, far more than a brain fever costs," he said at last, wit a sigh of satisfaction. Tt)3 Spsll Broken. BY MARY MARSHALL PARKS. (Copyright, 1901. by Daily Story Pub. Co.) "Anderson says he met you on tha avenue yesterday, but he was not sure that you recognfted him," said Jack, with a troubled look in his honest eyes. "I am delighted to hear it," answered an-swered Madge, with a trill of gay laughter. "That was precisely the state of mind that I wished to prepuce, but I was not certain I had acquired and yet his feet were still unsteady and his head curiously light. It would have been easy for him to give Madge up had he not firmly believed be-lieved that the , sweet-souled, dewy-eyed dewy-eyed girl who had won his heart still dwelt somewhere withia that cold and wordly exteriar, -ike a orincess shut in a tower, waiting for sorae bold knight to release her from the spell of the enchanter. "I fear I'm not the knight," he thought sadly, as he walked heavily down the street; and still, he could not decide to give her up not just yet the necessary manner. I believe my education is now complete. What an unsophisticated creature I was a year i.go!" ! "I liked the old Madge best," said Jack, bluntly. ,"Did you?" said Madge, indifferently. indifferent-ly. "But what a goose I was! I had so many illusions. I believed in so many things and so many people, almost al-most everything and everybody. I think, absurd as it seems." "I had hoped you would always be kind to my friends, Madge. Anderson is no carpet-knigji-iJif4l3D--lun:-est man and a good fellow." "That was simply one of your little misapprehensions," replied Madge, lightly. "I shall always choose my own friends." "I did not mean that you should make my friends yours in the nearest sense. That would be unreasonable," Bald Jack gravely. "All I ask is common com-mon civility." "That also is at my own discretion," "It is the old Madge, dear." "Jack Downing rs downed at last," said some would-be wit among the swaying figures on the ball room floor. "Brain fever." The words drifted into the conservatory conserva-tory where Madge was sitting, and for a moment she thought the lights had gone out. Then they blazed up again with ten-fold brilliancy, and at the same, time the white light of reason and common sense that had been so long obscured in the girl's soul flashed out with all its old power, shattering to atoms the shell of worldliness and I scepticism which had closed around her heart. retorted Madge wilfully. "I could never cut any one except i for the gravest reasons," said Jack, soberly. "I never cut any one in my ; life but Dick Foster." "Dick Foster? And what has he done to incur your displeasure?" Madge asked, with a bright, hard look. "You know that Ella Parsons is In the insane asylum and you know why," said Jack, sternly. "He ought not to be received in decent society." Madge's face grew still harder. "It , may as well be understood once for all that I shall recognize whom I please, and when and where I please," Seeing that Dick Foster was scanning scan-ning her with a look of cool curiosity, she composed her face and summoned up all the self-control she possessed. "I will go home now, if you please, Mr. Foster," she said coldly. "He has simply been overworked, my dear child," the old doctor repeated, repeat-ed, soothingly. "As you know, his father was obliged to go to Europe for a prolonged vacation; and that threw the whole responsibility of the business busi-ness on the boy.. He has carried the weight nobly for one so young; but I warned him weeks ago that he was overdoing, and must slacken his pace. I suppose he couldn't see his way clear to do it. He has a trained nurse and the best of care, and we'll pull him through all right." Although Madge went home convinced con-vinced that she had flattered herself too much In thinking that her insignificant insig-nificant doings had brought about Jack's illness, she was not entirely reassured. re-assured. Even If she had added little to the load he had been carrying, she had done nothing to lighten it, and she might have done so much. She had not dreamed it was so heavy. "Vnd while he was toiling like a r'u-re, you you were flirting with Dick ,ster," she said contemptuously to the pale face that confronted here as ae took the fading flowers from her hair and shook down the shining colls. Jack's hands lay like withered Iw.ve "And who is that?" eh said, icily. "That is a matter In which I would not be guided by the Prince of Good Form himself." "And who Is that?" asked the astonished aston-ished Jack. "Dick Foster," she responded with another hard glance. Jack rose unsteadily. He was not going to quarrel with Madge just then. He was not fit For days he had been aware that his head and legs we a little queer. Nothing serious, he said to himself, as b descended the steps; I |