ess in the
bathroom.

"Yes, you had another!" he retorted, though not until after she had
closed the door.

Presently he heard his daughter moving about in her room across the
narrow hall, and so knew that she had risen. He hoped she would come
in to see him soon, for she was the one thing that didn't press on his
nerves, he felt; though the thought of her hurt him, as, indeed, every
thought hurt him. But it was his wife who came first.

She wore a lank cotton wrapper, and a crescent of gray hair escaped to
one temple from beneath the handkerchief she had worn upon her head for
the night and still retained; but she did everything possible to make
her expression cheering.

"Oh, you're better again! I can see that, as soon as I look at you," she
said. "Miss Perry tells me you've had another splendid night."

He made a sound of irony, which seemed to dispose unfavourably of Miss
Perry, and then, in order to be more certainly intelligible, he added,
"She slept well, as usual!"

But his wife's smile persisted. "It's a good sign to be cross; it means
you're practically convalescent right now."

"Oh, I am, am I?"

"No doubt in the world!" she exclaimed. "Why, you're practically a well
man, Virgil--all except getting your strength back, of course, and that
isn't going to take long. You'll be right on your feet in a couple of
weeks from now."

"Oh, I will?"

"Of course you will!" She laughed briskly, and, going to the table in
the center of the room, moved his glass of medicine an inch or two,
turned a book over so that it lay upon its other side, and for a few
moments occupied herself with similar futilities, having taken on the
air of a person who makes things neat, though she produced no such
actual effect upon them. "Of course you will," she repeated, absently.
"You'll be as strong as you ever were; maybe stronger." She paused for a
moment, not looking at him, then added, cheerfully, "So that you can fly
around and find something really good to get into."

Something important between them came near the surface here, for though
she spoke with what seemed but a casual cheerfulness, there was a
little betraying break in her voice, a trembling just perceptible in the
utterance of the final word. And she still kept up the affectation of
being helpfully preoccupied with the table, and did not look at her
husband--perhaps because they had been married so many years that
without looking she knew just what his expressi