d.

"I'm going to marry him. Didn't you know?"

"No," said Brian. "I--I didn't know."

CHAPTER XXXVI

APRIL

April with its tender flame of green brought lagging days of worry.
Brian, said Kenny wistfully, was just--not Brian. He was an irritable
convalescent in a plaster cast, too nervous to be patient. His pain
had been intense, the shock disastrous to his self-control. The
haggard mark of it upon his face Don read with scalding heart and
brooded. When after a refractory week of undisciplined nerves and
temper that strained the doctor's endurance to the breaking point,
Brian went out of his head for forty-eight hours and babbled like a
madman about a face in the mist, Kenny in terror wired for Frank
Barrington. Brian, he thought, must be frantic with pain.

Frank came, mystified and apprehensive. He found a white and apathetic
patient who, with his delirium gone, denied abnormal pain.

"It isn't pain," Frank reported. "Of that I'm convinced. His head's
in excellent condition and his danger of lameness is at an end. Though
he resented the suggestion, I think there's something on his mind. And
whatever it is, he's much too shattered nervously to give it a normal
valuation."

"Keep that kid out of his room," advised Kenny hotly. "I can't. He
moons around up there like a ghost. Brian admits that he's so sorry
for him at times that it makes him feel sick."

"Hum!" said Frank and went in search of Don.

"I suppose you think I'm too much of a kid to have an opinion," Don
told him, his face white and fierce, "but I--I did it. And I watch him
more than anybody else--" He choked and blinked back boyish tears of
indignation.

"Keep Mr. O'Neill out of Brian's room," he snorted. "He'd excite
anybody!"

"I intend to keep you all out," was Frank's verdict in the end. "All
but the nurse and Joan. Joan's not temperamental and she has nothing
on her conscience. She has moreover a sedative convincing type of
cheer that's a mighty good influence. The rest of you are simply on a
sentimental spree of penance. You, Kenny, are so anxious to square
yourself that you make him nervous and he fumes and blames himself.
And Don can't look at him without remorse in his eyes. You're both too
flighty and penitential for Brian's good."

Frank departed and Joan compassionately set herself to sentinel the
sickroom. There were trying hours when her voice alone had power to
soothe the querulous young savage