office of the brilliant specialist who had sent him up to Reed.

It was several weeks now since Dolph had made his crisp suggestion that
Reed take his profession into bed with him. Even in that little time,
the change was measureless; to all practical intents and purposes, the
dying had come into a new life. The life, too, was by no means wholly
intellectual. As Reed's professional enthusiasm grew stronger, his
bodily gain apparently kept pace with it. To be sure, the lower half of
him was totally, irrevocably dead. Nevertheless, by sheer, energetic
will, Opdyke was making the upper half of his body do duty for the
whole, was gaining a control over his crippled lower limbs that, six
months before, he would have pronounced impossible.

With Ramsdell to pull and pry him to position, nowadays, he sat leaning
up against the pillows on his bed, for an hour or two of every morning.
The effort brought the beads of sweat out upon his forehead; but he
took that a good deal as a matter of course, talked bravely of a
rolling chair and a lift built on the corner of the house and even, a
little later on, of a motor car and of a down-town office. Best of all,
the old haunted look had left his eyes for ever. At least, so Olive had
believed, until that day. To-day, despite his smile of greeting, the
old expression was peering out at her, and she felt her hopes chilling
within her at the sight.

"What is it, Reed?" she asked him, after a few minutes of trivial
conversation. "Something has gone wrong."

"Not with me," he told her quickly. "In fact, things are very right.
Ask Ramsdell."

"But you look--"

"How?" His laugh awaited her final word.

"Worried," she told him flatly. "The way you used to look, last
winter."

"No reason that I should," he reassured her. "Things are going
swimmingly. Now that my new assistant has rallied from the shock of his
surroundings and come to a realizing sense that I prefer technical
journals to tracts, he is proving a grand success. He is going to be of
immense help; and I needed him, now that work is piling in. I'm hoping,
though, your father can plan some way of giving me a little better use
of my arms. There's a loose screw in there that he ought to tighten."

"Reed," Olive spoke thoughtfully; "you are rather unusual."

With some effort, he kept all edge of bitterness out of his voice, as
he replied,--

"I certainly trust so, Olive. It wouldn't be an advantage to humanity
at large to hav