On this morning he was wonderfully better--he had slept well, breezes and pleasant scents came through the open window, geese were cackling, a donkey's braying made him laugh "Silly old donkey," he said aloud to no one in particular. Then he was aware of Jacob, sitting bunched into a heap in the middle of the floor, his brown eyes peering anxiously through his hair. At every sound his ears would rise for a moment, but his eyes were fixed upon Roddy. The dog had been in Roddy's room a good deal during these last weeks, had been wrenched away from it. Roddy found that he was touched by this devotion; Jacob apparently cared more for him than did the other dogs--"Not a bad old thing--Often these mongrels are more human--But, Lord! he _is_ a sight!" The nurse was sitting sewing by the window. Roddy lay, happily, thinking that now at last that jolly bad pain really _did_ seem to have been left behind. He was immensely, wonderfully better; it would not be long, surely, before he was quite fit again, before he.... Then down it swung, swung like an iron door shutting all the world away from him, inexorable--"Always on your back ... never get up again!" His hand gripped the bed-clothes. "Nurse." "Yes?" "Tell me--am I dreaming or did someone say something the other day about--about my never being able, well, to toddle again, you know?" "I'm afraid----" "Thanks." He closed his eyes and then summoned all the grit and determination that there was in him to face this fact. He could not face it. It was as though he were struggling up the side of a high slippery rock--up he would struggle, up and up, now he was at the top, down he would slip again--it could not, oh! it could not be true! It _was_ true. As the days passed grimly in silence, he accepted it. It had always been his creed that in this world there was no place for the maimed and the halt. He was sorry for them, of course, but it was better that they should go; they only occupied room that was intended for lustier creatures. Well, now he was himself of the halt and maimed--that was ironical, wasn't it? Indeed he would much rather that he had pegged out altogether--better for everybody--but, as things were, he would square things out and see what he could make of it all. Then he saw as, every day, he grew stronger, that he had no resources; everything in his other life, as he now had come to think of it, had depended upon his physical strength, every pleasure, every desire, every ambition had had to do with his body--everything except Rachel.