"It is morning," said Joan.

At the sound of her voice there came within him an extraordinary fusing, at once a pain and a delight . . . fragments of memory . . . a moonbeam . . . tears . . . the crackle of a fire . . . a quarry mist . . . the glory of stars . . . a meaning . . . a motive that startled and defied him.

"There should be moonlight on your hair," said Brian, drifting slowly back to a knowledge of reality and pain.

"Moonlight?"

"You are Joan."

"Yes. At least until Doctor Cole finds someone else, I am at times your nurse. The pain, Brian?" She bent over him, straightening a pillow, touching his forehead with cool, questioning fingers.

"Not worse," said Brian.

"I am glad."

"There was a purple cloud," he said, frowning.

"The drug. Doctor Barrington wanted you to sleep."

"And the geranium?" His eyes sought it with relief.

"Kenny found it. Grogan's wife had it in her window. I think he must have bullied her a little--"

"Bless him! . . . Where's the mirror?"

"Downstairs. I'm sleeping there."

"Thank G.o.d!" He closed his eyes, his color ebbing. "This plaster cast," he apologized, "is like a suit of armor. It bothers me."

"Poor fellow! . . . Can you eat?"

"Not--yet. . . . Who's cooking?"

"Sometimes Don; sometimes I--unless the doctor sends me here.

Once--Kenny."

Brian smiled.

"You are very good," he said simply.

CHAPTER x.x.xV

THE PENITENT

Brian's skull was young and elastic. It saved him much, but Barrington lingered until the period of suspense was at an end. Kenny drove him to the Finlake station.

"This car has been a G.o.dsend," he said.

"And Garry's wired me to keep it. He's going to the coast."

"When?"

"Thursday."

Kenny's eyes were moist and grateful.

"Ah, Frank, darlin', you're a jewel!"

"Piffle!" countered Frank. "Kenny, old dear, I think you hit a chicken. If at any time," he added at the station, "you feel the need of me, I want you to wire. He's bound to be nervous. And if his convalescence seems slow and irksome, remember that the reaction of a shock like that isn't merely physical."

Kenny wrung his hand in silence. He motored home, oppressed by the bare line of hills and the noise of the quarry.

As usual the sight of Joan dispelled his gloom. Brian's pain was less.

He had fallen asleep of his own accord.

"He asked for you," she added.

"You told him Frank wouldn't let me in?"

"Yes."

"Hum. . . . Where's Don?"

"I sent him to the store."

Kenny darted away with an air of expectancy to the other shack, whence, after an excited period of foraging, he emerged, carrying a bundle.

Frank, knowing him well enough to read his shining enthusiasm aright, would have turned him back at Brian's door without a qualm. But Frank was not at hand.

"You look like a kid sneaking home with a stray cat!" Brian told him with a grin.

"What's in the bundle?"

"I've tried so many times to get in," admitted Kenny, "with Frank nippin' me just as my hand was on the k.n.o.b, that I'm feelin' a bit surrept.i.tious." He held up a tennis racket and a shotgun.

"And everything else," he boasted with an air of triumph, "that I took to Simon."

"And the bill-file!" exclaimed Brian, staring at the litter on the floor. "Jemima!"

"You remember it, Brian? You hated the sight of it. 'Tis the stiletto I stuck in a chunk of wax--"

"Lord, yes! And you wrote the I.O.U.'s on anything from a playing card to the end of a shirt."

"And never paid 'em until I had to," said Kenny with an unyielding air of self-contempt. "Many the time you checked 'em off, Brian, and rebuked me as you should. But that, by the Blessed Bell of Clare, is all behind me."

He proudly exhibited the bizarre collection of sc.r.a.ps, initialed in token of debt and reinitialed in token of payment.