een rather wonderful with her.

"I'm sure he would," he said gently, though his heart was wrung at the
sight of her flushed face and bright, unrecognising eyes. "Now will
you try to rest a little before I fetch him? See, I'll put my arm
round you--so, and if you'll go to sleep I'll send for him. He'll be
here when you wake."

He had gathered her into his arms as he spoke, and his very touch
seemed to soothe and quiet her.

"You're . . . rather like . . . Peter," she said, staring at him with a
troubled frown on her face.

Holding that burningly bright gaze with his own steady one, he answered
quietly:

"I _am_ Peter. They said you wanted me, so of course I came. You knew
I would."

"Peter? Peter?" she whispered. Then, shaking her head: "No. You
can't be Peter. He's dead, I think. . . . I know he went away
somewhere--right away from me."

Mallory's arms closed firmly round her and she yielded passively to his
embrace. Perhaps behind the distraught and weary mind which could not
recognise him, the soul that loved him felt his presence and was
vaguely comforted. She lay very still for some time, and presently one
of the nurses, leaning over her, signed to Peter that she was asleep.

"Don't move," she urged in a low voice. "This sleep may be the saving
of her."

So, hour after hour, Peter had knelt there, hardly daring to change his
position in the slightest, with Nan's head lying against his shoulder,
and her hand in his. Now and again one of the nurses fed him with milk
and brandy, and after a time the intolerable torture of his cramped
arms and legs dulled into a deadly numbness.

Once, watching from the foot of the bed, Kitty asked him softly:

"Can you stand it, Peter?"

He looked up at her and smiled.

"Of course," he answered, as though there were no question in the
matter.

It was only when the early dawn was peering in at the window that at
last Nan stirred in his arms and opened her eyes--eyes which held once
more the blessed light of reason. Then in a voice hardly audible for
weakness, but from which the wild, delirious note had gone, she had
spoken.

"Why, Peter, you've got some grey hairs!"

And Peter, forcing a smile to his drawn lips, had answered with his
joking remark about old age creeping on. Then, letting the nurse take
her from his arms, he had toppled over on to the floor, lying prone
while the second nurse rubbed his limbs and the agony of returning life
coursed