"

Brian glanced at her in droll suspicion. Her eyes laughed at him with
the wholesome mischief of a child.

"Almost!" he countered. "I insist upon my full meed of perfection.
When did I lose it?"

"When you hounded the nurse--"

"Plural noun," amended Brian wryly.

"Plural," agreed Joan. "I knew then that the idol had clay feet."

Brian groaned.

"Haven't you?"

"Yes," he said. "And a clay head. But I was never an idol."

"Oh, yes you were!" said Joan. "When you gave up your trip abroad to
help Don, you became to me a wonderful sort of--of selfless young
god--"

"Joan!" He stared at her in panic.

"Truly. And I'd rather have you human. I always thought of you with
thankful worship--"

"I approve the attitude," said Brian mischievously. "Please state
when and why discontinued."

"The minute I met you."

"Phew! That I consider unnecessarily heartless candor. Did you ever
hear of tempering the wind to the shorn lamb?"

"If I had met you in the end, alive and well," said Joan thoughtfully,
"I would have kept you up there on your pedestal out of mortal reach
but you came into my life, hurt and pitiful, and you needed help, my
sort of help, and something humanized you. You were no longer a god.
You were something human--"

"Thank God for that!" said Brian.

"Besides," added Joan, twinkling, "you had clay feet. Garry wrote me
that you had an Irish temper--"

"And I told you to write him!"

"I asked him _all_ about you," said Joan. "He wrote me such a splendid
letter. It made me like you--more. And you can't know what it meant
when you wrote and pledged yourself to help Don."

"Garry is my press agent," said Brian with a sniff, "I pay him. And
I'll dock him for the part about my temper."

"Brian, so often I--I've wanted to thank you!"

"Don't," he begged. "Please don't. What I did--you see," he
stammered, "it just--happened."

"Like the letter you wrote to me, praising someone else to guarantee
your own respectability. Is it always someone else, Brian? Don't you
ever think of yourself?"

"Lying here," said Brian moodily, "I've thought of little else.
There's Hannah with the tablecloth. It can't be six o'clock."

"It is," said Joan. "And Mr. Abbott's coming to supper."

She fled in a panic.

"Will the child never have done with chains?" Hannah demanded as the
weeks slipped by.

"When it wasn't Don, it was old Adam. And now it's someone else. And
Mr. O'Neill's go