glanced at it and glanced away. Nina Ward read it in bed. And
that was all.

There came to the house a steady procession of inquirers and bearers
of small tribute, flowers and jellies mostly, but other things also.
A table in David's room held a steadily growing number of bedroom
slippers, and Mrs. Morgan had been seen buying soles for still
others. David, propped up in his bed, would cheer a little at these
votive offerings, and then relapse again into the heavy troubled
silence that worried Dick and frightened Lucy Crosby. Something had
happened, she was sure. Something connected with Dick. She watched
David when Dick was in the room, and she saw that his eyes followed
the younger man with something very like terror.

And for the first time since he had walked into the house that night
so long ago, followed by the tall young man for whose coming a
letter had prepared her, she felt that David had withdrawn himself
from her. She went about her daily tasks a little hurt, and waited
for him to choose his own time. But, as the days went on, she saw
that whatever this new thing might be, he meant to fight it out
alone, and that the fighting it out alone was bad for him. He
improved very slowly.

She wondered, sometimes, if it was after all because of Dick's
growing interest in Elizabeth Wheeler. She knew that he was seeing
her daily, although he was too busy now for more than a hasty call.
She felt that she could even tell when he had seen her; he would
come in, glowing and almost exalted, and, as if to make up for the
moments stolen from David, would leap up the stairs two at a time
and burst into the invalid's room like a cheerful cyclone. Wasn't