that bought them."

And when he had replied briefly, "Well, thank you for your brains,
then!" the "company" had persisted with undue sharpness, "Don't thank
us for our brains. Brains are our business."

VI

It was one day just about the end of the fifth week that poor
Stanton's long-accumulated, long-suppressed perplexity blew up noisily
just like any other kind of steam.

It was the first day, too, throughout all his illness that he had made
even the slightest pretext of being up and about. Slippered if not
booted, blanket-wrappered if not coated, shaven at least, if not
shorn, he had established himself fairly comfortably, late in the
afternoon, at his big study-table close to the fire, where, in his low
Morris chair, with his books and his papers and his lamp close at
hand, he had started out once more to try and solve the absurd little
problem that confronted him. Only an occasional twitch of pain in his
shoulder-blade, or an intermittent shudder of nerves along his spine
had interrupted in any possible way his almost frenzied absorption in
his subject.

Here at the desk very soon after supper-time the Doctor had joined
him, and with an unusual expression of leisure and friendliness had
settled down lollingly on the other side of the fireplace with his
great square-toed shoes nudging the bright, brassy edge of the fender,
and his big meerschaum pipe puffing the whole bleak room most
deliciously, tantalizingly full of forbidden tobacco smoke. It was a
comfortable, warm place to chat. The talk had begun with politics,
drifted a little way toward the architecture of several new city
buildings, hovered a moment over the marriage of some mutual friend,
and then languished utterly.

With a sudden narrowing-eyed shrewdness the Doctor turned and watched
an unwonted flicker of worry on Stanton's forehead.

"What's bothering you, Stanton?" he asked, quickly. "Surely you're not
worrying any more about your rheumatism?"

"No," said Stanton. "It--isn't--rheumatism."

For an instant the two men's eyes held each other, and then Stanton
began to laugh a trifle uneasily.

"Doctor," he asked quite abruptly, "Doctor, do you believe that any
possible conditions could exist--that would make it justifiable for a
man to show a woman's love-letter to another man?"

"Why--y-e-s," said the Doctor cautiously, "I think so. There might
be--circumstances--"

Still without any perceptible cause, Stanton laughed again, and