ir is waiting with the limousine, and it strikes us
it's about time to start for home."

"Chilly wind blowing, too," Corrie suggested, his hands in the pockets
of his long gray motor-coat. "Fancy Lenoir lugging this old coat of mine
around in the car, Other Fellow, until now. It's a wonder the
butterflies haven't eaten it--moths, I mean."

Gerard and Flavia exchanged a glance of infinitely tender comprehension
of these two.

"I want to show you all something, first," Gerard detained them. "We
don't want to take any worries home that we can leave here. Give me that
ball of tape you put in your pocket this morning, Corrie."

Astonished, Corrie obeyed.

"Hello, Rupert!" Gerard sent his clear voice across to where that
black-eyed mechanician leaned against the Mercury Titan, a hundred feet
away. "Catch!"

Rupert promptly turned. The improvised ball in his fingers, Gerard
slowly raised both arms above his head in the old graceful gesture, his
brilliant amber eyes smiling at his companions, then launched the sphere
straight to its goal.

It was not Flavia who found overtaxed nerves give way.

"Gerard! _Gerard!_" Corrie's cry rang out; he sank down on a camp-chair
and covered his face.

Alarmed and remorseful, Gerard sprang to him.

"Corrie--don't take it like that! It is all right; I've been fighting
for this ten months under a French surgeon's orders."

"You never told me. Oh, Gerard, Gerard!"

"I did not want to tell you until I was sure the cure was real and
permanent. And I was not sure until I met the surgeon in New York,
yesterday."

"You could have told me last night. I might have been killed to-day and
_never_ have known."

Gerard exchanged with Mr. Rose a glance of very sad understanding, a
mutual acknowledgment of mutual error.

"Would you have driven the Mercury to-day against your father's wish, if
you had known that I should be able to drive my own car next year? I
think not. If you were to be taken from me and this life, I wanted you
to take with you the memory of this race instead of the humiliation of a
withdrawal. And I believed that I was dealing with an unsteadied boy who
needed the sharp tonic of work and danger--ah, Corrie, forgive
me!--instead of the strongest man in endurance I ever knew. But I would
tell no one else until I did you, although," he turned to the radiant
girl, "although it was hard not to hold out both hands to Flavia."

She put her hands in both his, then, and felt t