apoleon-III mustaches and sputtered and swelled up like an angry old
turkey. But when I talked nice to him in his own beloved Bordelaise he
let me do anything I pleased."

Blount looked up quickly, and the movement brought the head-throbbings
back with disconcerting celerity.

"You are cruelly kind to me, Patricia; everybody is kind to me. And I'm
not needing kindness just now," he ended.

"Aren't you? I don't agree with you, and I'm sure your father and Mrs.
Blount wouldn't." Then she went on to tell him how they had all been up,
watching the progress of the fire from their windows, when the word came
that he had been hurt in the street. Also, she told how his father had
impatiently smashed the telephone because, the wires having been cut and
tangled in the fire, he could get no response, and how, thereupon, he
had turned the entire night force of the hotel out to go in search of a
doctor. "But with all that, he couldn't stand it to look on while the
doctor was taking the stitches," she added. "He turned his back and
tramped over here to the window; and I could hear him gritting his teeth
and--and swearing."

If Evan Blount ate faster than a sick man should, it was because there
are limits to the finest fortitude. Patricia ran on cheerfully,
minimizing her own part in the first-aid incidents, and magnifying the
anxious and affectionate concern of the senator and his wife. He
listened because he could not help it; but when he had finished, and she
was inquiring if there was anything else she could do for him, he
dissembled, saying that he would try to sleep, and asking her to shut
out more of the daylight and to deny him to everybody until evening.

She promised; but naturally enough, with the dreadful responsibility
drawing nearer with every hour-striking of the tiny leather-cased
travelling-clock on the dresser, sleep was out of the question for him.
Hot-eyed and restless, he wore out the long afternoon in feverish
impatience, slipping now and then into the shadow land of delirium when
the pain was severest, but clinging always to the obsessing idea. At
whatever cost, the crisis must find him resolute to do his part. Gryson
must be met, the evidence of fraud must be secured, and the fraud itself
must be defeated.

The bright autumn day was fading to its twilight, and the shadows were
gathering around his bed, when Patricia tiptoed in to ask, first, if he
were awake, and, next, what he would like to have for his