"Good!" he said, heartily, towering above me. "That's something to work on! Well, I have your promise, and for love of your father and hate of me you'll walk yet, before the winter. And now, I will send Sarah to you with something to quiet those--outraged feelings. Tomorrow we'll begin the treatment." Then he left the room. And that's all Diary. I had a talk with Father. I can't set it down here. It was too beautiful and too intimate. But now that I realize all that it has meant, this long illness of mine, and all that my recovery might mean to him, I am willing to undergo any torture, any agony; willing even to endure the Cruel Magician and his Black Magic. How I hate him, Diary! It makes me feel quite strong to hate anyone so,--I, who have always cared for people, and lived on their love. What have I just written ... "lived on their love"...? I wonder if he is right, if I have taken everything, and given nothing in return? Tonight, with my mind and soul in chaos, I wish more than ever that my Mother had lived. Dear Diary, silent and loyal confidant, wish me well for tomorrow! GREEN HILL September 22 Yesterday, Diary, was the most exhausting day I have ever survived! An alternate succession of massage and naps, and naps and massage! And two efforts to sit up! The first was quite unsuccessful. I was trembling all over with excitement, and perhaps fear. And at the very first attempt, fear of pain and the immediate succeeding pain itself, absolutely unnerved me. Dr. Mac, standing close beside the bed, looked across at his colleague. He didn't shake his head, but the expression in his keen old eyes was equivalent. Dr. Denton frowned. "Will you try again, in a few minutes, Miss Carroll?" he asked, ignoring Dr. Mac, and the little hurt, despairing sound which I couldn't help making. "I can't!" I said flatly. He spread out his hands in an entirely foreign gesture of defeat. "Of course, if you prefer not...." he suggested sketchily. There was something so positively scornful in the look he bent on me that I writhed. I made my two eyes as much like swords as possible--I hope, Diary, that they were not crossed!--and snapped, "Do you mean to imply...?" Suddenly I stopped. I was looking straight into the steel-blue eyes, and it was not until I saw their frosty expression change to something distinctly like triumph that I discovered that--_I was sitting up!_ Actually! But only for the fraction of a minute. It was the discovery itself, I think, that laid me flat again, with Dr. Mac's arm around me, and his disengaged hand stretched across the bed, frantically shaking Dr. Denton's. "Laddie, 'tis mar-r-vellous!" he was saying, with a remarkable rolling of his r's. But Dr. Denton was looking at me. "You see," he said quietly, "that after all you _can_ do it. It is only a matter of patience, and the will to conquer. And perhaps a certain amount of--impetus."