"It's no especial use to preach to you about keeping up your courage, Reed. You're bound to do that, being you. I only wish I could have given you a squarer answer to your question; but--I can't. Now, about the surgeons: you'd like to have them come up again?" Reed shook his head, and the gesture was a weary one. "No use, doctor. I believe you--now. I had thought you were putting me off, out of a mistaken sense of friendship, and that I'd be able to worm the facts of the case from them. However, now you admit that the present uncertainty is the worst thing of all, I'm ready to take your word--only--it hurts! All night, I've been bracing myself to take it, and now nobody knows when it will come, or how." For a little while, he lay quite still; and the doctor sat still beside him, waiting. At last, Reed looked up with a forced alertness. "How is Olive?" he inquired, quite in his ordinary tone. Instantly the doctor's face changed, lost its look of waiting strain, grew frankly worried. "Reed, I wish I knew," he said. "Is she ill?" Opdyke's voice sharpened. "No; she's all right, only something has upset her. Didn't she come here, yesterday? No? I thought she was in here, every day; and maybe that--" The doctor checked himself abruptly. A ghost of a smile flitted across Reed's face, although the hair still lay damp upon his temples. "That we had been fighting, doctor?" he inquired. "Your fatherly fears misled you. I haven't seen her for two days." "Queer!" It was evident that Doctor Keltridge, as he rose, was thinking things out loud. "She was all right at breakfast, jolly as you please. Then she went out on some errands. I was out for luncheon, and so missed her. When she came down to dinner, she hadn't any appetite and was very feverish. What's more, if it had been anybody but Olive, I'd have vowed she'd cried her eyes out, all the afternoon." "And this morning?" Reed's accent showed that he was profoundly worried. Tears, indeed, were out of all harmony with his experience of Olive Keltridge. The doctor's reply came crisply. "Apparently, she'd cried them in again." Then once more he bent above the couch where Opdyke lay. "Hang on to the tail of every sort of hope, Reed," he bade him cheerily. "It's not an especially amusing occupation; but it is about the only thing for us to do at present. I'll look in on you, in the morning, to make sure how you slept. By the way," he tossed the last words back across the threshold; "as long as you haven't much else upon your hands, I think I'll order Olive to come down here, and let you cheer her up a little." And, before Reed could answer, he was gone. CHAPTER SIXTEEN