be planned for. She has taken this fancy to have
you with us on the Mediterranean cruise. We'll agree to land you and
send you home at the end of a couple of months if you positively feel
that you can't neglect your practice longer. But let me remind you,
Doctor, that your fee will be made to cover all possible income from
your practice during that time, and--I shall not be contented to measure
its size by that."

It was Burns's turn to stiffen within, if he did not let it show
outwardly. He spoke positively and finally. Even William Walworth saw
that it would be of no use to urge a man who said quite quietly:

"I've thought it over, as I promised you, and decided against it.
I assure you I appreciate the honour you would do me, and I should
immensely like the experience. But I know my going is not necessary to
Miss Evelyn's recovery, and that's the only thing that could make me
hesitate. I'll go up and see her at once, if you will forgive my haste.
I have a busy day before me."

William Walworth looked after him as he ran up the stately staircase,
and his thoughts were somewhat as Johnny Caruthers's had been. "He's
more of a man, crippled like that, than any I know. I wonder why he
won't go. I wonder. But he won't, that's settled. Now to appease Evelyn.
He'll not find that so easy."

Burns did not find it easy. He sat down beside the convalescent, a
patient who had everything on her side with which to win her chosen
physician's consent to stay by her till she should be in the possession
once more of the blooming beauty which had made her one of the envied
of the earth. He told her, in the direct manner he had used with her
father, that he could not fall in with their plans.

When he came away he was tingling all over. It had been so plain. She
had tried to disguise it, but she was where she could not run to cover,
and he had seen it all. It gave him no pleasure: he was not that sort.
He was sorry for the girl, but he was not in the least anxious
about her. She would get over it; it was not his fault--he was
conscience-clear on that. If ever he had been coolly--however
kindly--professional in his bearing it had been in this home of great
wealth, where it would have gone against his inmost grain to have
seemed to court liking. If anything, his orders had been more curt, his
concessions fewer, his whole treatment of the case on simpler lines than
it might have been in almost any less pretentious home with which he w