Sheila smiled faintly. "Thank you--can't. Just feel bruised and banged all over--feel as if I needed a plunge in that old pool of Bethesda." They spun on in silence for a few miles more before Sheila spoke again. "I learned one wonderful thing from Pancho--something I never felt sure of before." "What was that?" "Sorry--can't tell. It's the sort of thing you tell only the man you marry, after you've discovered he's the only man you ever could have married." Peter speeded the car ahead and smiled quietly into the gathering darkness. Fortunately he was not an impatient man. There is one point concerning the atom that Hennessy and Doctor Fuller still wrangle over, neither of them having the slightest conception of the other's point of view. "That was a case of good nursing and milk," the old doctor persists. While Hennessy beats the air with his fists and shouts: "Nothing of the sort! 'Twas egg-shells that done it." Chapter IV FOR THE HONOR OF THE SAN Peter Brooks paced the sanitarium grounds like a man possessed. Hands thrust deep into pockets, teeth hard clenched, head bare, the raw October wind ruffling his heavy crop of hair like a cock's comb. So suggestive was the resemblance that Hennessy, watching him from the willow stump by the pond, was forced to remark to Brian Boru, the gray swan, that Mr. Peter looked like a young rooster, after growing his spurs, looking for his first fight. "Aye, an' for one I'm wishin' he'd be findin' it," continued Hennessy. "He's bided peaceful an' patient till there is no virtue left in him. Ye can make believe women be civilized if ye like, but I'm knowin' that a woman's sure to go to the man that fights the hardest to get her, same as it was in the savage day o' the world. An' there's nothing that sets a man right quicker with himself than a good fight, tongues or fists." At that moment Peter would have gladly chosen either or both if fate could only have furnished him with a legitimate combatant. But a man cannot fight gossipy old ladies or jealous, petty-minded nurses, or a doctor whom he has never met and whose transgressions he cannot swear to. And yet Peter wanted to double up his fists and pitch into the whole community; he felt himself all brute and yearned for wholesale slaughter.