“What I’ve been thinking of,” David pursued his own train of thought, “is this:  I want you to go to Johns Hopkins and take up the special work you’ve been wanting to do.  I’ll be up soon and—­”

“Call the nurse, Aunt Lucy,” said Dick.  “He’s raving.”

“Not at all,” David retorted testily.  “I’ve told you.  This whole town only comes here now to be told what specialist to go to, and you know it.”

“I don’t know anything of the sort.”

“If you don’t, it’s because you won’t face the facts.”  Dick chuckled, and threw an arm over David’s shoulder, “You old hypocrite!” he said.  “You’re trying to get rid of me, for some reason.  Don’t tell me you’re going to get married!”

But David did not smile.  Lucy, watching him from her post by the window, saw his face and felt a spasm of fear.  At the most, she had feared a mental conflict in David.  Now she saw that it might be something infinitely worse, something impending and immediate.  She could hardly reply when Dick appealed to her.

“Are you going to let him get rid of me like this, Aunt Lucy?” he demanded.  “Sentenced to Johns Hopkins, like Napoleon to St. Helena!  Are you with me, or forninst me?”

“I don’t know, Dick,” she said, with her eyes on David.  “If it’s for your good—­”

She went out after a time, leaving them at it hammer and tongs.  David was vanquished in the end, but Dick, going down to the office later on, was puzzled.  Somehow it was borne in on him that behind David’s insistence was a reason, unspoken but urgent, and the only reason that occurred to him as possible was that David did not, after all, want him to marry Elizabeth Wheeler.  He put the matter to the test that night, wandering in in dressing-gown and slippers, as was his custom before going to bed, for a brief chat.  The nurse was downstairs, and Dick moved about the room restlessly.  Then he stopped and stood by the bed, looking down.

“A few nights ago, David, I asked you if you thought it would be right for me to marry; if my situation justified it, and if to your knowledge there was any other reason why I could not or should not.  You said there was not.”

“There is no reason, of course.  If she’ll have you.”

“I don’t know that.  I know that whether she will or not is a pretty vital matter to me, David.”

David nodded, silently.

“But now you want me to go away.  To leave her.  You’re rather urgent about it.  And I feel-well I begin to think you have a reason for it.”

David clenched his hands under the bed-clothing, but he returned Dick’s gaze steadily.

“She’s a good girl,” he said.  “But she’s entitled to more than you can give her, the way things are.”

“That is presupposing that she cares for me.  I haven’t an idea that she does.  That she may, in time—­ Then, that’s the reason for this Johns Hopkins thing, is it?”