look at David, so thin and feeble, so sunken from
his former portliness. And David saw his eyes, and knew.

"I've dropped a little flesh, eh, Dick?" he inquired. "Old bulge is
gone, you see. The nurse makes up the bed when I'm in it, flat as when
I'm out."

Suddenly his composure broke. He was a feeble and apprehensive old man,
shaken with the tearless sobbing of weakness and age. Dick put an arm
across his shoulders, and they sat without speech until David was quiet
again.

"I'm a crying old woman, Dick," David said at last. "That's what comes
of never feeling a pair of pants on your legs and being coddled like
a baby." He sat up and stared around him ferociously. "They sprinkle
violet water on my pillows, Dick! Can you beat that?"

Warned by Lucy, the nurse went to her room and did not disturb them.
But she sat for a time in her rocking-chair, before she changed into the
nightgown and kimono in which she slept on the couch in David's room.
She knew the story, and her kindly heart ached within her. What good
would it do after all, this home-coming? Dick could not stay. It was
even dangerous. Reynolds had confided to her that he suspected a watch
on the house by the police, and that the mail was being opened. What
good was it?

Across the hall she could hear Lucy moving briskly about in Dick's
room, changing the bedding, throwing up the windows, opening and closing
bureau drawers. After a time Lucy tapped at her door and she opened it.

"I put a cake of scented soap among your handkerchiefs," she said,
rather breathlessly. "Will you let me have it for Doctor Dick's room?"

She got the soap and gave it to her.

"He is going to stay, then?"

"Certainly he is going to stay," Lucy said, surprised. "This is his
home. Where else should he go?"

But David knew. He lay, listening with avid interest to Dick's story,
asking a question now and then, nodding over Dick's halting attempt to
reconstruct the period of his confusion, but all the time one part of
him, a keen and relentless inner voice, was saying: "Look at him well.
Hold him close. Listen to his voice. Because this hour is yours, and
perhaps only this hour."

"Then the Sayre woman doesn't know about your coming?" he asked, when
Dick had finished.

"Still, she mustn't talk about having seen you. I'll send Reynolds up in
the morning."

He was eager to hear of what had occurred in the long interval between
them, and good, bad and indifferent Dick told him.