ted with defeat written large all over it, leaving Jane to the
continued possession of Room 33, a pink kimono with slippers to
match, a hand-embroidered face pillow with a rose-coloured bow on
the corner, and a young nurse with a gift of giving Jane daily the
appearance of a strawberry and vanilla ice rising from a meringue of
bed linen.

Jane's complaint was temper. The family knew this, and so did
Jane, although she had an annoying way of looking hurt, a gentle
heart-brokenness of speech that made the family, under the
pretence of getting a match, go out into the hall and swear softly
under its breath. But it was temper, and the family was not
deceived. Also, knowing Jane, the family was quite ready to
believe that while it was swearing in the hall, Jane was biting
holes in the hand-embroidered face pillow in Room 33.

It had finally come to be a test of endurance. Jane vowed to stay
at the hospital until the family on bended knee begged her to emerge
and to brighten the world again with her presence. The family, being
her father, said it would be damned if it would, and that if Jane
cared to live on anaemic chicken broth, oatmeal wafers and massage
twice a day for the rest of her life, why, let her.

The dispute, having begun about whether Jane should or should not
marry a certain person, Jane representing the affirmative and her
father the negative, had taken on new aspects, had grown and
altered, and had, to be brief, become a contest between the
masculine Johnson and the feminine Johnson as to which would take
the count. Not that this appeared on the surface. The masculine
Johnson, having closed the summer home on Jane's defection and gone
back to the city, sent daily telegrams, novels and hothouse grapes,
all three of which Jane devoured indiscriminately. Once, indeed,
Father Johnson had motored the forty miles from town, to be told
that Jane was too ill and unhappy to see him, and to have a glimpse,
as he drove furiously away, of Jane sitting pensive at her window in
the pink kimono, gazing over his head at the distant hills and
clearly entirely indifferent to him and his wrath.

So we find Jane, on a frosty morning in late October, in triumphant
possession of the field--aunts and cousins routed, her father
sulking in town, and the victor herself--or is victor feminine?--and
if it isn't, shouldn't it be?--sitting up in bed staring blankly at
her watch.

Jane had just wakened--an hour later than usual; she