His eyes danced with pleasure at her coming. Yet, when he recognized, regardless of her efforts at concealment, that the gloomy influence, the shadow of which had cloaked her spirits at their last meeting, had not departed, his face clouded. He was conscious that his own disclosures, even though forced from him by her, might have had some part in causing her unhappiness and he endeavored to make amends by cheering her. "I asked Miss Knight to send for my motorcycle engine," he informed her. "I told her that I wanted to hitch it to this chair and get a little speed out of the thing. I promised her, 'Whither thou goest, Knightie, thither will I roll.'" Virginia expressed interest in the nurse's reply. "After bawling me out for calling her Knightie, she said that I was getting so attached to her that I spent my waking hours devising schemes to get hurt so as not to have to leave her." His visitor's smile of appreciation comforted Joe greatly. He took a deep breath and flinched when his tender ribs rebelled. His eyes roamed over the grass and trees and he watched the fleecy clouds floating in the azure sky. He pursued his campaign of encouragement. "It is great to take a breath of air without the ether flavor. It's a wonderful old world anyhow," he announced, as he again viewed his surroundings with great complacency. "Gosh!" he went on, "I wish I may never again see the inside of a building. Me for a job in God's own sunshine." In spite of the consolatory nature of Joe's remarks, a great loneliness had descended upon her. As she looked at him it seemed impossible that such a change could have come into her life since they two had planned for the hospital room. Then she had everything to make her happy. Now she was pledged to leave her father, her home, the few friends of her childhood, to go to a relative who was almost a stranger except in name. As she pictured the future, its loneliness frightened her. There came the temptation to bow to her father's will--to do anything to avoid that cheerless future. Then, in a moment, she was filled with sweet and tender thoughts of her mother and the creed of unselfishness. Straightway her resolution was strengthened. She would follow the way of her mother and be true to the message, no matter what the cost. Surely, God would make her father understand. Until that time she must wait. Joe's eyes returned to the girl at his side, when, lost in her own thoughts, she was unconscious of his scrutiny. The unhappiness which he caught in her face troubled him anew. "What makes you so sad, little girl?" he demanded uneasily. "Nothing," she maintained, with a smile so forced that it pathetically denied the truth of the statement. "There is something wrong, I know," he worried. "Am I in any way to blame?" She shook her head violently and then told him, "I am going away." "How long will you be gone?" He could not watch her averted face; but something told him that this was no ordinary trip.