bunkie at Base Six in Bordeaux had died of heart
failure when under ether. In a somewhat parched voice Tom started to
explain how this could come about, but in no time he was talking
gibberish. "The aorta," he heard himself saying, "is the big main artery
which comes out of one of the ventricles," and then he noticed the dazed
look on the men's faces and, floundering hopelessly, managed to laugh it
off. Well, he had tried to talk to them, anyway, and by consulting his
watch he found that half an hour had gone by.

After his third cigarette--he had come plentifully supplied--he looked
at his watch again. He could go at last! It was ten minutes to one, and
Nancy had probably finished long ago. "Apparently this guy isn't coming
today. I've got to run along. Well, I've enjoyed this talk a lot," and
with an inclusive smile and wave of the hand he went.

Nancy wasn't back in the car, and starting off in the direction they had
taken, he soon came to her room. There must have been a hundred women in
it and it was Leofwin, not Nancy, who was talking to them.

Tom opened the door quietly and sat down on a stool in the rear. Nancy,
pale and helpless, was sitting on one side of a resplendent circulatory
system drawn to illustrate the subtleties of the designer's art.

"You will observe, ladies," Leofwin was saying in his purest Suffolk
manner, "that shading is done with the crayon well back, like this." He
made a few swift lines on the corner of the System and looked up with
his bright, inquisitive smile. "Now are there any questions?" There was
a stony silence, amid which the one o'clock whistle blew.

The foreman, left in charge by Bob, rose. "I'm sorry, Miss Whitman, but
I'm afraid we'll have to stop today."

The worker's friend and sister bowed to him and, clutching her notes and
her bag, with firmly set lips and eyes fixed, marched to the door.
Leofwin followed, bowing pleasantly right and left, to the intense
gratification of his audience, and the trio retired.

"Jolly, wasn't it?" said Leofwin. "I'm sorry, though, we couldn't have
had more time. I didn't get to foreshortening at all. However, I think I
probably helped them a good deal. Sometime I'd like to tell them about
etching, you know, and aqua--and mezzotints."

Nancy received her assistant's remarks in complete silence. She was even
unable to do more than nod a good-bye to him. But she shook Tom's hand
in parting, and, with an air that might augur the worst, s