Had she never been seen in the cars with Morris, he should not have left home as he did, and might anticipate going back without a flush of shame and a dread of meeting old friends, who would think less of him than they used to do.  A thousand times Wilford had repented of his rashness, but never by a word had he admitted such repentance to any living being, and when on the dark, rainy afternoon which first saw him in the hospital, he turned his face to the wall and wept, he replied to one who said to him soothingly: 

“Don’t feel badly, my young friend.  We will take as good care of you here as if you were at home.”

“It’s the pain which brings the tears.  I’d as soon be here as at home.”

Gradually, however, there came a change, and Wilford grew softer in his feelings, longing for home, or for the sight of a familiar face, and half resolving more than once to send for Katy, who had offered to come, and to whom he had replied:  “It is not necessary.”  But as often as he resolved his evil genius whispered:  “She does not care to come here,” and so the message was never sent, while the longing for home faces brought on a nervous fever, which made him so irritable that his attendants sometimes turned from him in disgust, thinking him the most unreasonable man they had ever met.  Once he dreamed Genevra was there—­that she came to him just as she was in her beautiful girlhood—­that her fingers threaded his hair as they used to do in their happy days at Brighton—­that her hand was on his brow, her breath upon his face, and with a start he awoke just as the rustle of female garments died away in the hall.

“The new nurse in the second ward has been in here,” a comrade said.  “She seemed specially interested in you, and if she had not been a stranger I should have said she was crying over you.”

With a quick, sudden movement Wilford put his hand to his cheek, where there was a tear, either his own or that of the “new nurse,” who had so recently bent over him.  Retaining the same proud reserve which had characterized his whole life, he asked no questions, but listened intently to what his sick companions were saying of the beauty and tenderness of the young girl, they called her, who had glided for a few moments into their presence, winning their hearts in that short space of time, and making them wish she would come back again.  Wilford wished so too, conjuring up all sorts of conjectures about the unknown nurse, and once going so far as to fancy it was Katy herself.  But this idea was soon dismissed.  Katy would hardly venture there as a nurse, and if she did she would not keep aloof from him.  It was not Katy, and if not, who was it that twice when he was sleeping came and looked at him, his comrades said, rallying him upon the conquest he had made, and so exciting his imagination that the fever which at first was hardly observable began to increase, and the blood throbbed hotly through his veins, while his brows were knit together with thoughts of the mysterious stranger.  Then with a great shock it occurred to him that Katy had affirmed: