“Who did it?”

“I’m not going to tell you.  He feels badly enough now, and it wasn’t his fault.  He asked me at the time if he had touched me in the dark and I said no.  It was as slight a thing as that.  If we’d known it at the time we’d have fixed it up.  We didn’t, and that’s all there was to it.”

“You must tell me what sort of a case it was, Red.”

He looked down at her.  The two pairs of eyes met unflinchingly for a minute, and each saw straight into the depths of the other.  Burns thought the eyes into which he gazed had never been more beautiful; stabbed though they were now with intense shock, they were yet speaking to him such utter love as it is not often in the power of man to inspire.

He managed still to talk lightly.  “I expect you know.  What’s the use of using scientific terms?  The case was rottenly septic; never mind the cause.  But—­I’m going to be able to throw the thing off.  Just give me time.”

“Let me see it, Red.”

Reluctantly he turned the hand over, showing the small spot in which was quite clearly the beginning of trouble.  “Doesn’t look like much, does it?” he said.

“And it is not even protected.”

“What was the use?  The infection came at the time.”

“And you did all that work in the windbreak.  Oh, you ought not to have done that!”

“Nonsense, dear.  I wanted to, and I did it mostly with my left hand anyhow.”

“Your blood must be of the purest,” she said steadily.

“It sure is.  I expect I’ll get my reward now for letting some things alone that many men care for, and that I might have cared for, too—­if it hadn’t been for my mother—­and my wife.”

“You are strong—­strong.”

“I am—­a regular Titan.  Yes, we’ll fight this thing through somehow; only I have to warn you it’ll likely be a fight.  I’ll go to the hospital.”

“No!” It was a cry.

“No?  Better think about that.  Hospital’s the best place for such cases.”

“It can’t be better than home—­when it’s like ours.  We’ll fight our fight there, Red—­and nowhere else.”

He put one hand to his arm suddenly with an involuntary movement and a contraction of the brow.  But in the next breath he was smiling again.  “Perhaps we’d better be getting back,” he admitted.  “My head’s beginning to be a trifle unsteady.  But, I’m glad a thousand times we’ve had this day.”

“Was it wise to take it, dear?”

“I’m sure of it.  What difference could it make?  Now we’ve had it—­to remember.”

She shivered, there in the warm October sunlight.  A chill seemed suddenly to have come into the air, and to have struck her heart.

No more words passed between them until they were almost home.  Then Ellen said, very quietly:  “Red, would you be any safer in the hospital than at home?”

“Not safer, but where it would be easier for all concerned, in case things get rather thick.”