Painfully he went back over his talk with David the preceding
Sunday night.

"Don't be a fool," David had said. "Go ahead and take her, if
she'll have you. And don't be too long about it. I'm not as young
as I used to be."

"What I feel," he had replied, "is this: I don't know, of course,
if she cares." David had grunted. "I do know I'm going to try to
make her care, if it--if it's humanly possible. But I'd like to
go back to the ranch again, David, before things go any further."

"Why?"

"I'd like to fill the gap. Attempt it anyhow."

What he was thinking about, as he sat by David's bedside, was
David's attitude toward that threatened return of his. For David
had opposed it, offering a dozen trivial, almost puerile reasons.
Had shown indeed, a dogged obstinacy and an irritability that were
somehow oddly like fear. David afraid! David, whose life and
heart were open books! David, whose eyes never wavered, nor his
courage!

"You let well enough alone, Dick," he had finished. "You've got
everything you want. And a medical man can't afford to go gadding
about. When people want him they want him."

But he had noticed that David had been different, since. He had