When, next morning, the two girls met in the hall before breakfast, Kate repeated the message simply, carelessly. Eleanor found herself struggling to keep face and color. In spite of her long inner preparation, the emergency came to her with a sense of surprise. How should she carry off this interview? Though her respite had been long, though she had thought much, she had no prepared plan of campaign. Must she lie for the sake of his bodily health, assume the part which she had been playing when he went out of life? Even the question how to get rid of the nurse was a tiny embarrassment. She mustered her voice to say: "I think I'll look in now. Invalids are likely to be awake at this hour of the day." "Yes, you must be eager!" dabbed Kate. The nurse was no obstacle. She looked up toward the figure in the door, said: "A young lady to see you, Mr. Chester," and withdrew. Eleanor stood alone by the foot of the bed, looking into the eyes of her problem. He made no motion. He did not even put out his hand. He regarded her with the frown which usually broke into a smile. Now, it continued a frown. "Well, things happened, didn't they?" he said. His voice burst out of him with almost its normal force. "Yes, Bertram. A great deal." "And I thank you. It was bully work. I don't see how you stood it, holding me up the way you did--it ought to have killed off a man, let alone a girl. Didn't hurt you anywhere, did it?" "No--who told you?" Her voice was hard and constrained. Now Bertram smiled. It was different, this smile, from the old illumination of his features. She could not tell, in the moment she had to think, whether it was his illness that changed it so, or whether it really held a bitterness which, superficially, she read into it. "That's the answer," he said enigmatically. "You didn't know I was onto everything, did you? I never went out but once--just after the crash when the car turned over. I began to know things while they were carrying me up the bank. From that time, I was just like a man with his wind knocked out. It didn't hurt much, but I couldn't move a finger or a toe. I didn't want to move if I could. I was too busy just keeping alive. I couldn't open my eyes, but I heard everything. You just bet I heard everything!" This descent of the conversation into reminiscence and apparent commonplace gave Eleanor an opening into which she leaped. It was wonderful; she had read of such cases. Had he heard that child crying in the corner, and had it bothered him? Had he been conscious that it was Mark Heath and none other who was asking so many questions? Mark Heath had done so much for them--she would tell him about it some other time. But Bertram still lay there with his frown of a petulant boy on his face, and her voice ran down into nothing for lack of sympathy in her listener. "Do you remember all you said?" he asked when she was quite silent. "I think so--why?" The question had brought a little, warm jump of her nerves.