But long after David had put down his prayer-book that night, and
after the nurse had rustled down the stairs to the night supper on
the dining-room table, Lucy lay awake and listened to Dick's slow
pacing of his bedroom floor.

He was very gentle with David from that time on, and tried to return
to his old light-hearted ways. On the day David was to have his
first broiled sweetbread he caught the nurse outside, borrowed her
cap and apron and carried in the tray himself.

"I hope your food is to your taste, Doctor David," he said, in a
high falsetto which set the nurse giggling in the hall. "I may not
be much of a nurse, but I can cook."

Even Lucy was deceived at times. He went his customary round, sent
out the monthly bills, opened and answered David's mail, bore the
double burden of David's work and his own ungrudgingly, but off
guard he was grave and abstracted. He began to look very thin, too,
and Lucy often heard him pacing the floor at night. She thought
that he seldom or never went to the Wheelers'.

And so passed the tenth day of David's illness, with the smile on
Elizabeth's face growing a trifle fixed as three days went by
without the shabby car rattling to the door; with "The Valley"
playing its second and final week before going into New York; and
with Leslie Ward unconsciously taking up the shuttle Clare had
dropped, and carrying the pattern one degree further toward
completion.