“Is there any reason why I can’t see her for a bit of a visit if she goes Saturday?” asked King straightforwardly.  It was always a characteristic of his to go straight to a point in any matter; intrigue and diplomacy were not for him in affairs which concerned a girl any more than in those which pertained to his profession.  “You see we’ve been entertaining each other with letters and things, and it would seem a pity not to meet—­especially if she’ll be leaving town before I’m about.”

There was a curiously wistful look in his face as he said this, which Burns understood.  All along King had said almost nothing about the torture his present helplessness was to him, but his friend knew.

“Of course she’ll come; we’ll see to that.  She’s walking about a little now, and by Saturday she can come down this corridor on her two small feet.”

“See here—­couldn’t I sit up a bit to meet her?”

“Not a sixteenth of a degree.  You’ll lie exactly as flat as you are now.  If it’s any consolation I’ll tell you that you look like a prostrate man-angel seven feet long.”

“Thanks.  I’d fire a pillow at you if I had one.  I don’t want to look like an object for sympathy, that’s all.”

Burns nodded understandingly.  “Well, Jord,” he said a moment later, “will you go home on Saturday, too?”

The two looked at each other.  Then, “If you say so,” King agreed.

“All right.  Then we’ll get rid of two of our most interesting patients on that happy day.  Never mind—­the mails will still carry—­and Franz is a faithful messenger.  What’s that, Miss Dwight?  All right, I’ll be there.”  And he went out, with a gay nod and wave of the hand to the man on the bed.

This was on Monday.  On Tuesday King offered his petition that Anne Linton would pay him a visit before she left on Saturday.  When the answer came it warmed his heart more than anything he had yet had from her: 

Of course I will come—­only I want you to know that I shall be dreadfully sorry to come walking, when you must still lie so long on that poor back.  Doctor Burns has told me how brave you are, with all the pain you are still suffering.  But I am wonderfully glad to learn that he is so confident of your complete recovery.  Just to know that you can be your active self again is wonderful when one thinks what might have happened.  I shall always remember you as you seemed to me the day you brought me here.  I was, of course, feeling pretty limp, and the sight of you, in such splendid vigour, made me intensely envious.  And even though I see you now “unhorsed,” I shall not lose my first impression, because I know that by and by you will be just like that again—­looking and feeling as if you were fit to conquer the world.

It was the most personal note he had had from her, and he liked it very much.  He couldn’t help hoping for more next day, and did his best to secure it by the words he wrote in reply.  But Wednesday’s missive was merely a merrily piquant description of the way she was trying her returning strength by one expedition after another about her room.  On Thursday she sent him some very jolly sketches of her “packing up,” and on Friday she wrote hurriedly to say that she couldn’t write, because she was making little visits to other patients.