There loomed in her path a black wall of broken ice. She drew herself slowly over the crest of the massed blocks. Beyond lay a pleasant blackness of clear water, into which she plunged,--still warm with the glow of her perfect happiness. CHAPTER IX Webber had a well-developed case of typhoid, and Sommers had him moved to St. Isidore's. The doctor accompanied him to the hospital, and once within the doors of his old home, he lingered chatting with the house physician, who had graduated from the Philadelphia school shortly after Sommers had left. The come and go of the place, the air of excitement about the hospital, stirred Sommers as nothing in months had done. Then the attention paid him by the internes and the older nurses, who had kept alive in their busy little world the tradition of his brilliant work, aroused all the vanity in his nature. When he was about to tear himself away from the pleasant antiseptic odor and orderly bustle, the house physician pressed him to stay to luncheon. He yielded, longing to hear the talk about cases, and remembering with pleasure the unconventional manners and bad food of the St. Isidore mess-table. After luncheon he was urged to attend an operation by a well-known surgeon, whose honest work he had always admired. It was late in the afternoon when he finally started to leave, and then a nurse brought word that Webber was anxious to see him about some business. He found Webber greatly excited and worried over money matters. To his surprise he learned that the foppish, quiet-mannered clerk had been dabbling in the market. He held some Distillery common stock, and, also, Northern Iron--two of the new "industrials" that were beginning to sprout in Chicago. "You must ask the brokers to sell if the market is going against me," the clerk exclaimed feverishly. "Perhaps, if I am to be tied up here a long time, they'd better sell, anyway." "Yes," Sommers assented; "you must get it off your mind." So, with a promise to see White and Einstein, the brokers, at once, and look after the stock, he soothed the sick man. "You're a good fellow," Webber sighed. "It's about all I have. I'll tell you some time why I went in--I had very direct information."