An _ignis fatuus_. At this point of his reflection he remembered his first talk with her, wherein he had counselled her never to lose faith in her Will-o’-the-Wisp, but to compel it to be her guiding star. More ironical laughter from the high gods! And yet, why not? He wrestled with the temptation. As he lay, convalescent on his back, his brain clear, the sap of youth working in his veins, the uncontrolled fancies of the imaginative writer wove themselves into shreds of fine romance and tapestries of exquisite scenes. Just a little concentration, impossible in the open hospital ward, and all these would blend together into a thing of immortal beauty. He would find a publisher. Nothing easier. No name would appear. Or else, perhaps, as a handle for convenience sake, he would sign the book “Incognito.” It would stir the hearts of men, and they would say: “There is but one man living who could do this and that is Alexis Triona.” And Olivia, reading it, and beholding him in it, would find her heart stirred with the rest, yet far far more deeply than the rest, and would seek him out, obeying his far-off counsel, and believe that, in his essential self and in his infinite love, he was verily her guiding-star. But when the hour of exaltation had passed and given way to the dreary commonplace, when the nurse came to wash him like a child, or to chatter pleasantly of the outside world, the revue which she had seen on her free afternoon, or the sentimental novel which had beguiled her scanty leisure, he knew that he had been living in a land of dreams. His real achievement Olivia knew, and by it she was unmoved. Myra had held out to him no chance of hope; only certainty of despair. By no further achievement could Olivia be persuaded. She realized her Will-o’-the-Wisp as what it really was, a miasmatic gas leading her into quagmires. She would bitterly resent his reappearance. It would be another trick, another way of flaunting before her under false pretences. As well write to her now that he was a mangled wreck in University College Hospital. In the course of time he was able to leave his bed and be wheeled about the ward and afterwards to hobble about on a crutch. But the injured leg was just a bit shorter than the other, so that he was condemned to a perpetual limp; and though the ribs were mended, yet their breakage had occasioned internal lesions which would have to be watched for the rest of his life. No more adventures in wide spaces. No more tramps to John o’ Groats. “But I’m a born wanderer,” he cried to the surgeon who made the final pronouncement. “What shall I do when the wander fever is on me?” “Fill yourself up with bromide and stick leeches on your head.” He laughed into the smiling kindly face, and was silent for a moment. “I can drive a car, I suppose?” he said after a while. “Safer to drive a horse. You haven’t to crank it up.” “So I’m going out, a hopeless crock.”