"Sick? No! What makes you ask such a fool question?" "Why, you're looking perfectly green round the gills. You're not going out, are you?" For the Pretender had sprung up and was dragging on his boots. He was finding it impossible to pretend any longer. John watched him anxiously, all uncomprehending. "Better let me take your temperature, Mac. Diphtheria's fairly booming in your year. Packard has it now." "Nonsense! I'm all right. You meds. are always on the trail of death and disease." "I thought you said you were going to plug to-night." Charles Stuart was savagely dragging on his overcoat. "Well, I'm not, I'm going out." "You haven't a pain or an ache anywhere, have you?" The patient might have answered truthfully that he was conscious only of one great ache through his whole being, but instead he answered shortly: "Pain? Your granny! No, of course not!" The door slammed soundingly behind him, and John sat gazing at it until the house shook with another tremendous bang, this time from the street door. "Well, I'll be----" said the young man, and then paused, feeling how utterly hopeless it was to find a word expressive of his feelings. In all the years of their life-long comradeship he had never known Charles Stuart to behave in such a manner. "He's gone batty!" he said at last to the closed door, and then slowly and meditatively he returned to his books. "He's fixing for dip. all right," he added; "I'll have Bags in to overhaul him when he comes back." Then, with the satisfaction of a medical student who has correctly diagnosed and prescribed for a case, he settled himself comfortably in the easy-chair and went to work. Meanwhile the supposed victim of incipient diphtheria was striding down the street as though pursued by that and every other fell disease. A worse malady had seized him, and he was calling himself a fool that he had been so blind to its symptoms. Life without the sunshine of Elizabeth's presence was a problem he had never faced. That he and she belonged to each other since the beginning of time had always been his deep-rooted conviction. And now he had lost her, and had realized it for the first time on the very day when he had found the true glorious meaning of life. His senses were numbed by the irony of his fate. He was conscious only of the fact that he had received a blow, and that he must move swiftly and more swiftly. He was whirling round a corner when he heard his name called sharply. He stopped short in mingled joy and fear. Someone was crossing the street towards him with headlong speed. It was she herself!--Elizabeth--coming to him with outstretched hands. He went swiftly to meet her. "Lizzie! What is it?" he cried, catching the hands in his. "Oh, Charles Stuart!" she cried with a sob of relief, "come--quick! I've found Eppie!" CHAPTER XVII DAWN CLOUDS "And so you see; Aunt Margaret, I could not possibly have acted otherwise. I had to leave it all."