to be."

"Perhaps."

"Would you love me more if I were brave?"

"I don't believe I could."

She laughed, and with her head aslant, she asked, "Then what's the good
of trying?"

"Just to make it easier for me," he said.

She uttered a little sound like one who stands in mountain mists and
through a rent in the grey curtain sees a light shining in the valley.

"Would it do that for you? Oh, if it's going to help you, I'm afraid no
longer." She reached out and held his face between the finger-tips of
her two hands. "I promise not to be afraid. Already"--she looked about
her--"I am not afraid. How wonderful you are! And what a wise physician!
Physician, heal thyself. You'll go away?"

"Yes, I can go now."

"Where?"

"For a voyage. The Mediterranean. Not a liner--on some slow-going boat."

"Not a leaky one," she begged.

"Ah, I'd come back if she had no bottom to her. Nothing is going to hurt
me or keep me from you!"

She did not protest against his boasting, but smiled because she knew he
meant to test her.

"You'll be away a long time," she said.

"And you'll marry me when I come back?"

"Yes. If I can."

"Why not? In April? May? June? In June--a lovely month. It has a sound
of marriage in it. But after all," he said thoughtfully, "it seems a
pity to go. And I wouldn't," he added with defiance, "if I were not
afraid of being ill on your hands."

"My hands would like it rather."

"Bless them!"

"Oh--what silly things we say--and do--and you haven't seen Notya yet."

"Come along then," he said, and as they went up the stairs together
Helen thought Mr. Pinderwell smiled.

It was after this visit that Mildred Caniper coolly asked Helen if Dr.
Mackenzie were in the habit of using endearments towards her.

"Not often," Helen said. Slightly flushed and trying not to laugh, she
stood at the bed-foot and faced Mildred Caniper fairly.

"You allow it?"

"I--like it."

Mildred Caniper closed her eyes. "Please ask him not to do it in my
presence."

"I'll tell him when he comes again," Helen answered agreeably, and her
stepmother realized that the only weapons to which this girl was
vulnerable were ones not willingly used: such foolish things as tears or
sickness; she seemed impervious to finer tools. Helen's looks at the
moment were unabashed: she was trying to remember what Zebedee had said,
both for its own sake and to gauge its effect on Notya to whose memory
it was clear enough, and its natural