“I seem to be always relying on somebody's kindness to--to keep things together. First, for years and years, it was Aunt Harriet; now it is you.” “Don't you realize that, instead of your being grateful to me, it is I who am undeniably grateful to you? This is home now. I have lived around--in different places and in different ways. I would rather be here than anywhere else in the world.” But he did not look at her. There was so much that was hopeless in his eyes that he did not want her to see. She would be quite capable, he told himself savagely, of marrying him out of sheer pity if she ever guessed. And he was afraid--afraid, since he wanted her so much--that he would be fool and weakling enough to take her even on those terms. So he looked away. Everything was ready for her return to the hospital. She had been out that day to put flowers on the quiet grave where Anna lay with folded hands; she had made her round of little visits on the Street; and now her suit-case, packed, was in the hall. “In one way, it will be a little better for you than if Christine and Palmer were not in the house. You like Christine, don't you?” “Very much.” “She likes you, K. She depends on you, too, especially since that night when you took care of Palmer's arm before we got Dr. Max. I often think, K., what a good doctor you would have been. You knew so well what to do for mother.” She broke off. She still could not trust her voice about her mother. “Palmer's arm is going to be quite straight. Dr. Ed is so proud of Max over it. It was a bad fracture.” He had been waiting for that. Once at least, whenever they were together, she brought Max into the conversation. She was quite unconscious of it. “You and Max are great friends. I knew you would like him. He is interesting, don't you think?” “Very,” said K. To save his life, he could not put any warmth into his voice. He would be fair. It was not in human nature to expect more of him. “Those long talks you have, shut in your room--what in the world do you talk about? Politics?” “Occasionally.” She was a little jealous of those evenings, when she sat alone, or when Harriet, sitting with her, made sketches under the lamp to the accompaniment of a steady hum of masculine voices from across the hall. Not that she was ignored, of course. Max came in always, before he went, and, leaning over the back of a chair, would inform her of the absolute blankness of life in the hospital without her. “I go every day because I must,” he would assure her gayly; “but, I tell you, the snap is gone out of it. When there was a chance that every cap was YOUR cap, the mere progress along a corridor became thrilling.” He had a foreign trick of throwing out his hands, with a little shrug of the shoulders. “Cui bono?” he said--which, being translated, means: “What the devil's the use!”