Nance might have held out to the end, had her sympathies not been profoundly stirred by the crushing effect the news of Mac's serious tubercular condition had upon his parents. On the day they were told Mr. Clarke paced the corridor for hours with slow steps and bent head, refusing to see people or to answer the numerous inquiries over the telephone. As for Mrs. Clarke, all the fragile prettiness and girlish grace she had carried over into maturity, seemed to fall away from her within the hour, leaving her figure stooped and her face settled into lines of permanent anxiety. The mother's chief concern now was to break the news of his condition to Mac, who was already impatiently straining at the leash, eager to get back to his old joyous pursuits and increasingly intolerant of restrictions. "He refuses to listen to me or to his father," she confided to Nance, who had coaxed her down to the yard for a breath of fresh air. "I'm afraid we've lost our influence over him. And yet I can't bear for Dr. Adair to tell him. He's so stern and says such dreadful things. Do you know he actually was heartless enough to tell Mac that he had brought a great deal of this trouble on himself!" Nance slipped her hand through Mrs. Clarke's arm, and patted it reassuringly. She had come to have a sort of pitying regard for this terror-stricken mother during these days of anxious waiting. "I wonder if you would be willing to tell him?" Mrs. Clarke asked, looking at her appealingly. "Maybe you could make him understand without frightening him." "I'll try," said Nance, with ready sympathy. The opportunity came one day in the following week when the regular day nurse was off duty. She found Mac alone, propped up in bed, and tremendously glad to see her. To a less experienced person the brilliancy of his eyes and the color in his cheeks would have meant returning health, but to Nance they were danger signals that nerved her to her task. "I hear you are going home next week," she said, resting her crossed arms on the foot of his bed. "Going to be good and take care of yourself?" "Not on your life!" cried Mac, gaily, searching under his pillow for his cigarette case. "The lid's been on for a month, and it's coming off with a bang. I intend to shoot the first person that mentions health to me." "Fire away then," said Nance. "I'm it. I've come to hand you out a nice little bunch of advice." "You needn't. I've got twice as much now as I intend to use. Come on around here and be sociable. I want to make love to you." Nance declined the invitation. "Has Dr. Adair put you wise on what he's letting you in for?" "Rather! Raw eggs, rest, and rust. Mother put him up to it. It's perfect rot. I'll be feeling fit as a fiddle inside of two weeks. All I need is to get out of this hole. They couldn't have kept me here this long if it hadn't been for you." "And I reckon you're counting on going back and speeding up just as you did before?" "Sure, why not?"