raged. And I'm
interested--interested to the bottom of my heart. I'm going to put the
best there is in me into this problem. I never tackled anything in my
life that appealed to me more powerfully. If that's any comfort just now,
I offer it. If you were my brother I couldn't be more anxious to pull you
out of this ditch. Now, trust me, and try to go to sleep."

Leaver did not look up at the kind, almost boyishly tender face above
him, but he pressed the hand which grasped his own, and Burns saw a tear
creep out from under the closed lids of the eyes under which the black
shadows lay so deeply. The well man took himself away from the sick one
as quickly as he could after that,--he couldn't bear the sight of that
tear! It was more eloquent of Leaver's weakness than all his difficult
words.

When he met Miss Mathewson, an hour afterward, in the hall, on her way
back to her patient, he delayed her.

"I want you to do more than nurse this case, Amy," he said, fixing her
with a certain steady look of his with which he always gave commands.
"I want you to put all your powers, as a woman, into it. Forget that you
are nursing Dr. Leaver, try to think of him as a friend. You can make one
of him, if you try, for you have in you qualities which will appeal to
him--if you will let him see them. You have hardly let even me see
them,"--he smiled as he said it,--"but my eyes have been opened at last.
I'm inclined to believe that you can do more for our patient than even my
wife or I,--if you will. Suppose,"--he spoke with a touch of the
dangerously persuasive manner he could assume when he willed, and which
most people found it hard to resist,--"you just let yourself go, and
try--deliberately try--to make Dr. Leaver like you!"

She coloured furiously under the suggestion. "Dr. Burns! Do you realize
what you're saying?"

"Quite thoroughly. I'm asking you not to hesitate to make of yourself a
woman of interest and charm for him, for the sake of taking him out of
himself. Isn't that a perfectly legitimate part for a nurse to play when
that happens to be the medicine needed? You have those powers,--how
better could you use them? Suppose you are able, through your effect of
sweetness and light, to minister to a mind diseased;--isn't that quite as
worthy an occupation as counting out drops of aconite, or applying
mustard plasters?"

Amy Mathewson shook her head. "Do you realize, Dr. Burns, that a man
like--your guest--is so far beyond