Jim was the first to find his voice. “I’m glad to see you’re able to be around, Miss Nelson,” he said calmly. “You won’t have to go back; I was just leaving.” Jerry went down the hall to the door with him, while Joy went into the living-room and sank down on the lounge. It was uncanny, the way that man had understood her, had spoken in a matter-of-fact voice and relaxed her, and left without making a point of leaving. She realized, as she lay among the pillows, that she could not have reached her room again with any degree of certainty; he had tactfully forestalled her; very thoughtful, for a man. Jerry came back into the room, smoking in a desultory manner. “I didn’t think I’d tell you, Joy, because I know you don’t like him—but that boy has been here every blooming day since you’ve been sick, to find out how you were at first-hand—while your Grant has stalled at phone distance. I hate to say anything about a man I’ve never met, Joy, but Grant listens to me like a flat tire.” Joy giggled nervously. “It isn’t easy for Jim to come, either,” Jerry added. “He takes the trip way out here after he gets through working every day.” “It’s none of Jim Dalton’s business,” said Joy. “He doesn’t have to come; I wish he wouldn’t. I barely know him, and he keeps turning up and acting as if he were my father or something.” “Or something!” Jerry repeated derisively. “No—you’ve got a wrong slant on him. Of course, if you look at it that way, he _is_ being a bit outside the works—but when you think it over, the knights of old they talk about who beat it to the rescue of dames in distress, didn’t always stop to decide whether it was any of their business.” A bitter resentment swept over Joy—resentment that it had been Jim Dalton and not Grant who had followed them on that ride; that it had been Jim and not Grant who had come to see how she was. “Jerry!” she cried suddenly. “Did you know that Grant had left me?” Jerry had been watching her smoke rings space themselves to the ceiling, but turned swiftly. At her look of blank interrogation, Joy repeated: “Grant has left me! I—I don’t think he’s ever coming back!” Then she stopped, with a tearing intake of breath. There was an interval while Jerry’s smoke rings turned to curlicues and gargoyles, and Jerry remained seemingly lost in admiration of her skill. Finally, Jerry spoke. “Of course, Joy, I don’t know the facts of the case—but he’ll come back. I’d stake ten to one on it. He’ll come back—I tell you he will!” “I’m waiting——!” said Joy. And she waited—through a week that turned hope to hopelessness. She dared not leave the apartment for fear the telephone would ring. She told herself that he was not coming; yet she sat in the living-room, a book on her lap, or sat at the piano touching keys into strange harmonies . . . waiting.