“We won’t talk about this any more to-day, Jack,” he said.  “You’ve had enough for now, and I have what I needed,—­the facts to work upon.  Just let me say this much.  I’m not discouraged by anything I’ve heard to-day.  I’ll not try any bluffs or jollyings with you, because I know they wouldn’t work, but I do say this, honestly:  I’m not discouraged.  And I’m interested—­interested to the bottom of my heart.  I’m going to put the best there is in me into this problem.  I never tackled anything in my life that appealed to me more powerfully.  If that’s any comfort just now, I offer it.  If you were my brother I couldn’t be more anxious to pull you out of this ditch.  Now, trust me, and try to go to sleep.”

Leaver did not look up at the kind, almost boyishly tender face above him, but he pressed the hand which grasped his own, and Burns saw a tear creep out from under the closed lids of the eyes under which the black shadows lay so deeply.  The well man took himself away from the sick one as quickly as he could after that,—­he couldn’t bear the sight of that tear!  It was more eloquent of Leaver’s weakness than all his difficult words.

When he met Miss Mathewson, an hour afterward, in the hall, on her way back to her patient, he delayed her.

“I want you to do more than nurse this case, Amy,” he said, fixing her with a certain steady look of his with which he always gave commands.  “I want you to put all your powers, as a woman, into it.  Forget that you are nursing Dr. Leaver, try to think of him as a friend.  You can make one of him, if you try, for you have in you qualities which will appeal to him—­if you will let him see them.  You have hardly let even me see them,”—­he smiled as he said it,—­“but my eyes have been opened at last.  I’m inclined to believe that you can do more for our patient than even my wife or I,—­if you will.  Suppose,”—­he spoke with a touch of the dangerously persuasive manner he could assume when he willed, and which most people found it hard to resist,—­“you just let yourself go, and try—­deliberately try—­to make Dr. Leaver like you!”

She coloured furiously under the suggestion.  “Dr. Burns!  Do you realize what you’re saying?”

“Quite thoroughly.  I’m asking you not to hesitate to make of yourself a woman of interest and charm for him, for the sake of taking him out of himself.  Isn’t that a perfectly legitimate part for a nurse to play when that happens to be the medicine needed?  You have those powers,—­how better could you use them?  Suppose you are able, through your effect of sweetness and light, to minister to a mind diseased;—­isn’t that quite as worthy an occupation as counting out drops of aconite, or applying mustard plasters?”

Amy Mathewson shook her head.  “Do you realize, Dr. Burns, that a man like—­your guest—­is so far beyond me in mind and—­tastes—­in every way, that I could never—­interest him in the way you speak of—­even if I were willing to try?”