ients that'll mean something I
understand for myself now," he said. He sat almost upright among the
blue pillows, his arm outstretched along the back of the couch, his long
legs comfortably extended. It was no longer the attitude of the invalid
but of the well man enjoying earned repose. "I wonder how often I've
said to some tired mother or too-busy housewife who longed for rest: 'If
you were to become crippled or even forbidden to work any more and made
to rest for good, how happy these past years would seem to you when you
were tired because you had accomplished something.' I can say that now
with personal conviction of its truth. It looks to me as if to come in
dog-tired and drop into this corner with the memory of a good job done
would be the best fun I've ever had."

"I know," King nodded. "I learned that, too, last spring."

"Of course you did. And now, instead of going to work, I've got to take
this blamed sea voyage of a month. Van and Leaver are pretty hard on me,
don't you think? The consolation in that, though, is that my wife needs
it quite as much as I do. I want to tan those cheeks of hers. Len, will
you wear the brown tweeds on shipboard?"

"Of course I will. How your mind seems to run to clothes to-night. What
will Your Highness wear himself?"

"The worst old clothes I can find. Then when I get back I'll go to the
tailor's and start life all over again, with the neatest lot of stuff he
can make me--a regular honeymoon effect." Burns laughed, lifting his
chin with the old look of purpose and power touching his thin face.

"I'm happy to-night," he went on; "there's no use denying it. I'm not
sorry, now it's over, I've had this experience, for I've learned some
things I've never known before and wouldn't have found out any other
way. I know now what it means to be down where life doesn't seem worth
much, and how it feels to have the other fellow trying to pull you out.
I know how the whisper of a voice you love sounds to you in the middle
of a black night, when you think you can't bear another minute of pain.
Oh, I know a lot of things I can't talk about, but they'll make a
difference in the future. If I don't have more patience with my patients
it'll be because memory is a treacherous thing, and I've forgotten what
I have no business to forget--because the good Lord means me to
remember!"

CHAPTER XVI

WHITE LILACS AGAIN

It was the first day of May. Burns and Ellen had not been at home tw