Henceforth he kept to his word, visiting the fugitive once at least a day, bringing him good sustenance and more comfortable stuff for his bedding, and staying to converse awhile as he bandaged the inflamed and aching flesh. Sometimes he would go by the garden and sometimes by the wood: the little sport of secrecy and evasion tickled him for a while; it was like a game, and he was still boy enough to enjoy a game. Yet now and again it _would_ occur to him that a game indefinitely prolonged might lose its point, and expose, through constant use, its own machinery; and so far no period to the one he was playing seemed suggested. An uncomfortable feeling dawned and developed in him that he had burdened himself, and at a crucial time, with an undetachable incubus. As the days went on, in proportion as the invalid’s main injury seemed to heal superficially, the inner hurt appeared to intensify. The fact threatened to confirm his first most grave suspicions; but it did not help to solve his difficulties. He began to foresee the ultimate necessity of taking somebody into his confidence. What if matters should go from bad to worse? He was doing his best for the man; but his best was after all only the best of ignorance. Good intentions might very well make bad nurses, unless reinforced by knowledge. Instead of curing he might be actually helping to kill. The patient, in fact, in defiance of all the young man’s ministrations, continued to look ghastly; he seemed to speak with difficulty; he complained of eternal pain and unrest. And no wonder, buried, so injured, in that dank and gloomy crypt. One welcome change there was: soft and open Spring weather had followed on that day of cold and storm, mitigating the frigid atmosphere of the stone chamber. Going down the garden on the morning after the encounter, Brion felt his every pore expanding with delight. Balm was in the air; an incense rose from the earth; the winter aconites had blinked the frost from their golden eyes, and, with their ruffs starched and smart, were smiling in holiday rows under the wall. Even a surviving snowdrop or two--those sweet little acolytes of Candlemas, as Clerivault called them--opened their hearts to the sun, and betrayed to it the tender green thoughts they were used to guard so shyly.