she beamed upon them. She
walked along with them to the door, slipping her arm inside Doctor
Darby's as she did so. "If you only knew," she said, "what a wonderful
thing it is to have the doctors stop being encouraging and try to
frighten you, instead. Because that means you really do think he's
getting well."

"The balance of probability has swung to that side," Steinmetz admitted
in his rather affected staccato. "At all events he's out of my beat." His
beat was the respiratory tract and his treatment the last word in
vaccines and serums.

She held Darby back a little. "Must we go on feeling," she asked,
"that anything could happen any minute? Or--well, could Rush go back
to the farm? Graham Stannard has gone to New York, I think, they're
partners, you know, so he must be rather badly wanted. And this
waiting is hard for him."

Rush could go, of course, Darby assured her. "For that matter," he went
on with a quick glance at her, "why don't you go with him? Take your aunt
along, too. For a few days, at least. You couldn't do better."

She demurred to this on the ground that it didn't seem fair to Paula. If
there was a period of Arcadian retirement down on the books for anybody,
it was Paula who was entitled to it.

But Paula, as Darby pointed out, wouldn't take it in the first place,
and, surprisingly, didn't need it in the second. "She told me just now
that she'd slept eighteen hours out of the last twenty-four and was ready
for anything. She looked it, too."

He understood very well her irrepressible shrug of exasperation at that
and interrupted her attempt to explain it. "It's another breed of animal
altogether," he said. "And at that, I'd rather have had her job than
yours. You're looking first rate, anyhow. But your aunt, if she isn't to
break up badly, had better be carried off somewhere." He glanced around
toward Steinmetz who had withdrawn out of ear-shot. "There are some
toxins, you know," he added, "that are even beyond him and his
microscopes."

Mary had meant to broach this project at dinner but changed her mind and
waited until Aunt Lucile had withdrawn and she and Rush were left alone
over their coffee cups for a smoke.

"Poor Aunt Lucile! She has aged years in the last three weeks. And it
shows more, now the nightmare is over, than it did before."

"Is it over? Really?" he asked.

"Well, we don't need miracles any more for him. Just ordinary good care
and good luck. Yes, I'd say the nightmare