eying a physician's order about
living in the open, of keeping decent hours, of avoiding crowds and
excitement until he was quite himself again. But he could have done that
without coming to Toba Inlet.

Of course he wanted to see Sam Carr again. Also he wanted to see Sophie.
_Why_ he wished to see her was not so readily answered. He wanted to see
her again, that was all--just as he had wanted to see Canada and his
aunts, and the green slopes of the Pacific again. Because all these
things and people were links with a past that was good and kindly by
comparison with the too-vivid recent days. Yes, surely, he would be glad
to see Sam Carr--and Sophie. When he recalled the last time he spoke
with her he could smile a little wryly. It had been almost a tragedy
then. It did not seem much now. The man who had piloted a battle-plane
over swaying armies in France could smile reminiscently at being called
a rabbit by an angry girl.

It was queer Sophie had never married. His thought took that turn
presently. She was--he checked the years on his fingers--oh, well, she
was only twenty-four. Still, she was no frail, bloodless creature, but a
woman destined by nature for mating, a beautiful woman well fit to
mother beautiful daughters and strong sons, to fill a lover with joy and
a husband with pride.

A queer warmth flushed Thompson's cheek when he thought of Sophie this
wise. A jealous feeling stabbed at him. The virus was still in his
blood, he became suddenly aware. And then he laughed out loud, at his
own camouflaging. He had known it all the time. And this trip it would
be kill or cure, he said to himself whimsically.

Still it _was_ odd, now he came to think of it, that Sophie had never in
those years found a man quite to her liking. She had had choice enough,
Thompson knew. But it was no more strange, after all, than for himself
never to have looked with tender eyes on any one of the women he had
known. He had liked them, but he hadn't ever got past the stage of
comparing them with Sophie Carr. She had always been the standard he set
to judge the others. Thompson realized that he was quite a hopeless case
in this respect.

"I must be a sort of a freak," he muttered to himself when he was stowed
away in his blankets. "I wonder if I _could_ like another woman, as
well, if I tried? Well, we'll see, we'll see."

CHAPTER XXIX

TWO MEN AND A WOMAN

Thompson drove his canoe around a jutting point and came upon a w