"I am afraid that you make a rather troublesome patient, don't you?" she asked lightly. Norton made no answer but lay motionless save for the constant plucking at his coverlet, his eyes moodily fixed upon the wall. Mrs. Engle, finding the water-pitcher empty and saying that she would be back in two seconds, went out to fill it. Promptly Norton's eyes returned to Virginia's face, resting there steadily. "I've been dizzy and sick and half out of my head a whole lot," he said abruptly. "I've been thinking of you most of the time, dreaming about you, climbing cliffs with you. . . ." He broke off suddenly, but did not remove his eyes from hers. It was she who turned away, pretending to find it necessary to adjust the window-curtain. It was impossible to sit quietly while he looked at her that way, his eyes all without warning filling with a look for any girl to read a look of glowing admiration, almost a look of pure love-making. Norton sighed and again his head moved restlessly on his pillow. "I've had time to think here of late," he said after a little. "More time to think than I've ever had before in my life. About everything; myself and Jim Galloway and you. . . . I have decided to send word to the district attorney to let Galloway go," he added, again watching her. "I am not going to appear against him and there's no case if I don't." "But . . ." she began, wondering. "There are no buts about it. Suppose I can get him convicted, which I doubt; he'd get a light sentence, would appeal, at most would be out of the way a couple of years or so. And then it would all be to do over again. No; I want him out in the open, where he can go as far as he wants to go. And then . . ." She saw how his body stiffened as he braced himself with his feet against the foot-board. "We won't talk shop," she said gently. "It isn't good for you. Don't think about such things any more than you have to." "I've got to think about something," he said impatiently. "Can I think about you?" "Why not?" she answered as lightly as she had spoken before. "Maybe that isn't good for me either," he answered. "Nonsense. It's always good for us to think about our friends." His eyes wandered from hers, rested a moment upon the little table near his bedhead and came back to her, narrowing a little. "Will you set a chair against that window-shade?" he asked. "The light at the side hurts my eyes." It was a natural request and she turned naturally to do what he asked. But, even with her back turned, she knew that he had reached out swiftly for something that lay on the table, that he had thrust it out of sight under his pillow.