You
see--well I couldn't think just then, but now, when my think tank has
resumed business, I savvey a heap of things. One is that you weren't
telling me any news."

"What makes you say that?" Eleanor bent her grave grey eyes on him.

"I had the signal already. I mightn't have seen it fully if this smash
hadn't come, but just the same I caught it away ahead of you. That
afternoon up on the Las Olivas trail when we came together. When I
kissed you."

Had she ever let him kiss her?

He made an incurved gesture of his free hand, as though joining two
wires.

"It didn't connect. That's all. I was acting on a hunch when I told
you to keep it dark. Told anyone?"

Not until afterward did she think to be offended by this question. At
the time, she answered with a simple negative.

"That's good. It is just between us now. I suppose the matter with me
was that I wanted to fly high, and you were about the highest thing in
sight--"

"Don't, Bertram. I'm not high. Am I hurting you? Oh, am I unkind when
you are ill?"

"Oh, if you think it's hurting me, you're off. This is a swell way to
talk, isn't it, considering that I'm here--" his eyes swept the
aristocratic comforts of the Tiffany spare room.

"We mustn't think of that. It's too big to think of that!"

"I guess you're right. Now that is finished, going to forgive me
because I walked over to Northrup?"

"I've nothing of any kind to forgive. It's you, I think, that must
forgive."

"Oh, it's all square, everything's all square. I want to be good
friends with you if you'll let me. I hope," his voice was almost
tender, "you connect with the right man. He won't have any too much
blood in his neck, but he'll have a lot of general culture in his
system."

Here she realized that she had something to forgive. She repeated,
mentally, her act of renunciation as she said:

"You're a great, strong, generous man. I can't tell you how much I
thank you for the course you've taken to-day. You're going to succeed
and--some woman--is going to be proud of you." She had avoided by a
thread naming the woman. "I shall be glad I knew you, and I shall be
your friend as long as you'll let me."

He smiled his old smile and his uninjured hand went out.

"Shake!" he said.

Yet it was a relief that the nurse came back and said quietly, "You've
talked enough." As she walked to the door, Eleanor found that her will
was focused on the operation of her feet, commanding them to move with