h about it, and perhaps a trifle
terrified. But it was his final argument that won Dick over.

"I thought you'd found out there's nothing in running away from
trouble."

Dick straightened.

"You're right," he said. "We'll stay here and fight it out together."

He helped David up the stairs to where the nurse stood waiting, and then
went on into his own bedroom. He surveyed it for the first time since
his return with a sense of permanency and intimacy. Here, from now on,
was to center his life. From this bed he would rise in the morning,
to go back to it at night. From this room he would go out to fight for
place again, and for the old faith in him, for confiding eyes and the
clasp of friendly hands.

He sat down by the window and with the feeling of dismissing them
forever retraced slowly and painfully the last few months; the night on
the mountains, and Bassett asleep by the fire; the man from the cabin
caught under the tree, with his face looking up, strangely twisted, from
among the branches; dawn in the alfalfa field, and the long night tramp;
the boy who had recognized him in Chicago; David in his old walnut bed,
shrivelled and dauntless; and his own going out into the night,
with Lucy in the kitchen doorway, Elizabeth and Wallace Sayre on the
verandah, and himself across the street under the trees; Beverly, and
the illumination of his freedom from the old bonds; Gregory, glib and
debonair, telling his lying story, and later on, flying to safety. His
half-brother!

All that, and now this quiet room, with David asleep beyond the wall and
Minnie moving heavily in the kitchen below, setting her bread to rise.
It was anti-climacteric, ridiculous, wonderful.

Then he thought of Elizabeth, and it became terrible.

After Reynolds came up he put on a dressing-gown and went down the
stairs. The office was changed and looked strange and unfamiliar. But
when he opened the door and went into the laboratory nothing had been
altered there. It was as though he had left it yesterday; the microscope
screwed to its stand, the sterilizer gleaming and ready. It was as
though it had waited for him.

He was content. He would fight and he would work. That was all a man
needed, a good fight, and work for his hands and brain. A man could live
without love if he had work.

He sat down on the stool and groaned.

XLVI

One thing Dick knew must be done and got over with. He would have to see
Elizabeth and tell her the s