Dick's decision to cut himself off from Elizabeth was born of his

certainty that he could not see her and keep his head. He was resolutely

determined to keep his head, until he knew what he had to offer her. But

he was very unhappy. He worked sturdily all day and slept at night out

of sheer fatigue, only to rouse in the early morning to a conviction

of something wrong before he was fully awake. Then would come the

uncertainty and pain of full consciousness, and he would lie with his

arms under his head, gazing unblinkingly at the ceiling and preparing to

face another day.

There was no prospect of early relief, although David had not again

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referred to his going away. David was very feeble. The look of him

sometimes sent an almost physical pain through Dick's heart. But there

were times when he roused to something like his old spirit, shouted for

tobacco, frowned over his diet tray, and fought Harrison Miller when he

came in to play cribbage in much his old tumultuous manner.

Then, one afternoon late in May, when for four days Dick had not seen

Elizabeth, suddenly he found the decision as to their relation taken out

of his hands, and by Elizabeth herself.

He opened the door one afternoon to find her sitting alone in the

waiting-room, clearly very frightened and almost inarticulate. He could

not speak at all at first, and when he did his voice, to his dismay, was

distinctly husky.

"Is anything wrong?" he asked, in a tone which was fairly sepulchral.

"That's what I want to know, Dick."

Suddenly he found himself violently angry. Not at her, of course. At

everything.

"Wrong?" he said, savagely. "Yes. Everything is wrong!"

Then he was angry! She went rather pale.

"What have I done, Dick?"

As suddenly as he had been fierce he was abject and ashamed. Startled,

too.

"You?" he said. "What have you done? You're the only thing that's right

in a wrong world. You--"

He checked himself, put down his bag--he had just come in--and closed

the door into the hall. Then he stood at a safe distance from her, and

folded his arms in order to be able to keep his head-which shows how

strange the English language is.

"Elizabeth," he said gravely. "I've been a self-centered fool. I stayed

away because I've been in trouble. I'm still in trouble, for that

matter. But it hasn't anything to do with you. Not directly, anyhow."

"Don't you think it's possible that I know what it is?"




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