The morning paper stated that Dr. Bellingham had suffered a fracture of the skull and internal injury, but might live. A note to Paula from Madame Nestor late the next day contained the following paragraph: "I called at the hospital to inquire. A doctor told me that the case is likely to become a classic one. Never in his experience, he stated, had he witnessed a man put up such a fight for life. It will be long, however, before he is abroad again. He must have been following you quite madly, because there never was a man more careful in the midst of city-dangers than Bellingham. Why, a scratched finger completely upset him--in the earlier days. Inscrutable, but thrilling--isn't it, my dear Paula?" * * * * * "Did you follow _Moby Dick's_ whale tracks around the wet wastes of the world?" Reifferscheid asked several mornings later, as Paula entered. Her face was flushed. A further letter from Quentin Charter had just been tucked into her bag. "Yes, and Mr. Melville over trans-continental digressions," she answered. "He surely is Neptune's own _confrère_." "Did you get the leviathan alongside and study the bewildering chaos of a ninety-foot nervous system?" Reifferscheid went on with delight. "Exactly, and colored miles of sea-water with the emptyings of his vast heart. Then, there was an extended process of fatty degeneration, which I believe they called--blubber-boiling." They laughed together over the old whale-epic. "They remember Melville up in Boston and Nantucket," he added, "but he's about as much alive as a honey-bee's pulse elsewhere. The trouble is, you can't rectify this outrage by law. It isn't uxoricide or sheep-stealing--not to know Melville--but it's the deadly sin of ingratitude. This is a raw age, we adorn--not to rock in the boat of that man's soul. Why, he's worthy to stand with the angels on the point of the present." The big editor always warmed her when he enthused. Here, in the midst of holiday books pouring in by scores, he had time to make a big personal and public protest against a fifty-year-old novel being forgotten. "But isn't Melville acknowledged to be the headwaters of inspiration for all later sea-books?" Paula asked.