ivate, and who had let him hold her hand
at parting while she said in accents an angel might have envied,
"Good-by, Soldier Boy."

Quin sighed profoundly and slipped his arm under his head, and at the
same moment the owner of the knee upon which he was leaning also heaved a
sigh and shifted _her_ position, and somehow in the adjustment two lonely
hands came in contact and evidently decided that, after all, substitutes
were _some_ comfort.

It was not until all the whistles in town had announced the birth of the
New Year that the party broke up, and it was not until then that Quin
realized that he was very tired, and that his pulse was behaving in a way
that was, alas, all too familiar.

CHAPTER 3

Friday after New Year's found Sergeant Graham again flat on his back at
the Base Hospital, facing sentence of three additional weeks in bed. In
vain had he risked a reprimand by hotly protesting the point with the
Captain; in vain had he declared to the nurse that he would rather live
on his feet than die on his back. Judgment was passed, and he lay with an
ice-bag on his head and a thermometer in his mouth and hot rage in his
heart.

What made matters worse was that Cass Martel had come over from the
Convalescent Barracks only that morning to announce that he had received
his discharge and was going home. To Quin it seemed that everybody but
himself was going home--that is, everybody but the incurables. At that
thought a dozen nameless fears that had been tormenting him of late all
seemed to get together and rush upon him. What if the doctors were
holding him on from month to month, experimenting, promising,
disappointing, only in the end to bunch him with the permanently disabled
and ship him off to some God-forsaken spot to spend the rest of his life
in a hospital?

He gripped his hands over his chest and gave himself up to savage
rebellion. If they would let him alone he might get well! In France it
had been his head. Whenever the wound began to heal and things looked a
bit cheerful, some saw-bones had come along and thumped and probed and
X-rayed, and then it had been ether and an operation and the whole
blooming thing over again. Then, when they couldn't work on his head any
longer, they'd started up this talk about his heart. Of course his heart
was jumpy! All the fellows who had been badly gassed had jumpy hearts.
But how was he ever going to get any better lying there on hi