. Every effort then to cheer him left him tired
and quiet. Talk of the chain of circumstances that had, oddly, brought
them all together, he avoided with a frown. Any reference to her life
in New York, Joan found, plunged him into gloom. Was it, she wondered,
because he knew his accident had brought her year of play and study to
an end? She longed passionately to tell him how easy it had been for
her--how trifling, as a sacrifice, in the face of his kindness to Don;
but shyness held her back.

"Honeysuckle days!" Brian called his days of convalescence, for the
vine upon the porch hung full.

"Is it so hot in the pines?" he wondered one sultry afternoon.

"No," said Joan. "There it's always dark and cool and quiet. When you
can walk, Brian, you must see the cabin."

Heat quivered visibly in the valley. A faint breeze frolicked now and
then upon the ridge, fluttering the honeysuckle and the pages of an
open book upon the table.

"I'm glad it isn't," said Brian in relief. "Somehow I can't imagine
Kenny off there in a hot cabin striding up and down and grilling Don.
He's so--so combustible. As a matter of fact," he added, "I can't
imagine him in any sort of cabin grilling Don. Soft-hearted lunatic!"

"Don gets awfully on his nerves," said Joan, shaking her head. "If it
wasn't that he's doing it for you--"

"For me, Joan!"

Joan nodded.

"What you began, he'll finish for you. He said so. It bothered him
that all those dreary months you spent at the quarry just to help Don
might be in vain. Don went so dreadfully to pieces."

"Sentimental old hothead," grumbled Brian, touched and pleased. "I
love him for it."

"I wonder if you realize how much he cares!"

"For--you?" asked Brian quietly. "Yes."

"No, no," said Joan, coloring. "For you. For you he has worked
through splendidly to--to less of self. And so has Don. It's a
wonderful tribute, Brian. To inspire something fine and beautiful is
fine and beautiful itself."

Brian stared uncomfortably at a red barn in the valley.

"To have something dormant inside that catches fire and burns up
splendidly into unselfishness is better," he said. "This porch is like
a throne. One sits up here among the honeysuckles and finds a world of
summer at his feet."

"Last summer," remembered Joan, "Kenny used to tell me over and over
again that you were all things in one. All, Brian. Think of it!
Almost," she finished demurely, "I came to believe it.