In the afternoon Belle was allowed in. To his great relief she told him in her characteristic, concise way, how she felt about Kenyon. He caught her young, she said--marvellously young, "and if he should ever come back to New York all he'll get from me will be two fingers. I've quite recovered. So you may take that line out of your forehead, old boy. One of these days when you're out and about again we'll walk about four times round the reservoir and I'll tell you something of what's been going through my mind while you've been ill. In fact, we'll have a very substantial pow-wow about Nicholas Kenyon, and I don't think we shall leave him quite as immaculate as he usually is by the time we've finished, do you?" "No," said Peter, "I don't. All the same, I'm grateful to him for one thing. He has brought father out of his shell,--that's about the best thing he ever did in his life." There was something amusing as well as touching in the way in which the two brothers met again. It was the next morning early. Peter was still in bed, with his hair all frowzled and the remains of sleep still in the corners of his eyes. Graham had ten minutes before he was obliged to leave the house to go downtown. "Hello, old sport!" said Graham. "Hello, sonnie! Rather a hot thing in ties, that, eh?" Graham cleared his throat and put his hand rather self-consciously to the black-and-white effect newly designed by his pet firm of haberdashers. "I think it'll make the senior partner blink all right," he said. "How d'you feel this morning?" Peter showed his teeth. "I'm sitting up and taking nourishment. Probably before the end of the week you'll see me in shorts and a zephyr sprinting round the park before breakfast." "I'd like to," said Graham, and he held out his hand. Peter took it and gave it a scrunch which had in it nothing of the invalid. "Give my love to the subway," he said, "and my kind regards to Wall Street." Graham grinned, waved his hand and left the room. He found it necessary to blow his nose rather hard on his way down-stairs. "Oh, Gee!" he said to himself. "Oh, Gee! Only think if Peter had--" He didn't allow himself to finish the thought. And then came Betty, and the way in which she and Peter came together--the way in which they stood only a step or two from the door, inarticulate in their love and thankfulness, was too much even for the trained nurse, to whom love and death and the great hereafter were mere commonplaces. She withdrew to the dressing-room and stayed there for a whole solid quarter-of-an-hour, eliminating herself with a tactfulness for which Peter blessed her and Betty became her friend for all time. "My baby!" said Peter. "We shall have to begin all over again. We're almost strangers." But Betty shook her head. "No," she said. "No. There hasn't been one moment during all this time that I haven't been with you." And Peter nodded. "That's dead true," he said.