"Signs of the times, I suppose," Reed answered crisply. "What's more, doctor, I don't quite like them." Bending forward, the doctor laid a steady hand upon the lean wrist beside him. As he had supposed, the pulse was leaping with a furious unsteadiness. "Who taught a mere engineer like you to read the signs?" he demanded. The pulse raced a little faster. Then Reed replied,-- "My inherent common sense." "Your inherent self-conceit, you'd better say," the doctor retorted curtly. "What's more, you lay awake to read them? Three quarters of the night? Yes? I thought so. Next time, though, I'll trouble you to let your signs alone. You've got to learn their alphabet straight, before you go to work to get much meaning out of them. Anyway, they are my care, not yours." Then, as the pulse steadied down a little, the doctor spoke more gently. "Boy, what is it that you need to know?" Under the strong, heedful fingers, the pulse gave one great leap, stopped, then fell to pounding madly. Meanwhile, there came a tightening of Opdyke's lips. Then he said, with a voice devoid of any intonation,-- "Doctor, I think it has come to where I need to know the outcome of all this." "Reed boy, I thought so." The doctor's hand, leaving the wrist, came to rest upon the nearer shoulder with a grip which was like a benediction. "It has been a fearful time of waiting. I wish I could tell you what the end will be; but--Reed, I can't." "You mean you won't," Opdyke corrected him a little sharply. But Doctor Keltridge forgave the sharpness, as his eyes rested on the drawn, white face. "I mean I can't," he iterated. "Reed, that's the damned cruelty of the whole position, for you and for us who care for you. It would have been any amount easier to have accepted things at their worst, months ago, than to keep on in this grilling indecision, fearing everything and yet hanging on to every vestige of hope for something better. Don't think I haven't been realizing that, my boy, ever since they brought you in and tucked you up in that infernal bed. It wouldn't have been one half so hard for you, then, or since, if you'd known that you'd step down and out of it at any given time, or even that you were there to stay for ever. It's the uncertainty that kills. And that--" "Well?" Reed asked him steadily. "Is just as great as ever." "You mean?" The doctor straightened in his chair, stiffening himself to administer the bitter draught. "That the dozen best surgeons in the country never could agree on it, whether you will come out of this thing, or not. All we can do is to grip our courage, and leave the matter--" "On the knees of Allah?" Reed asked a little bitterly. The doctor's reply was grave. "Yes, Reed. Upon the knees of Allah and within the hands of modern science. They are bound to work together, in a case like this." The grip upon Reed's shoulder tightened for a minute. Then it fell away, and again the supple fingers shut upon Reed's wrist.