had naturally taken charge.

And it was at this point in my long, often interrupted relation to Phil
and Jimmy that Phil took charge.

"You're going to bed, Hunt--and you're going now! There's absolutely
nothing further you can do this evening, and if anything turns up Jimmy
or I can attend to it. You've been living on your nerves all day and you
show it, too plainly. We don't want another patient to-morrow. Run out
and get some veronal powders, Jimmy. Thanks. No protests, old man.
You're going to bed!"

I went; and, drugged with veronal, I slept--slept dreamlessly--for
fourteen hours. When I woke, a little past ten, Jimmy was standing
beside me.

"Good morning, Mr. Hunt. You look rested up some! How about breakfast?"
His greeting went through all the sounds and motions of cheerfulness,
but it was counterfeit coin. There was something too obviously wrong
with Jimmy's ordinarily fresh healthy-boy face; it had gone sallow and
looked pincushiony round the eyes. I stared at him dully, but could not
recall anything that might account for this alteration. Only very
gradually a faint sense of discomfort began to pervade my consciousness.
Hadn't something happened--once--something rather sad--and rather
horrible? When was it? Where was I? And then the full gust of
recollection came like a stiff physical blow over my heart. I sat up
with a sharp gasp for breath....

"Well!" I demanded. "Miss Goucher! How is she?"

"She's dead, sir," answered Jimmy, turning away.

"And----"

"She's wonderful!" answered Jimmy.

He had not needed Susan's name.

Yes, in a sense, Jimmy was right. He was not a boy to look far beneath
the surface effects of life, and throughout the following weeks Susan's
surface effect was indeed wonderful. Apparently she stood up to her
grief and mastered it, developing an outer stillness, a quietude
strangely disquieting to Phil and to me. Gentleness itself in word and
deed, for the first time since we had known her she became spiritually
reticent, holding from us her deeper thoughts. It was as if she had
secretly determined--God knows from what pressure of lonely sorrow--to
conventionalize her life, to present the world hereafter nothing but an
even surface of unobtrusive conformity. This, we feared, was hereafter
to be her wounded soul's protection, her Chinese Wall. It had not
somehow the feel of a passing mood; it had rather the feel of a
permanent decision or renunciation. And it troubled our hear