“I don’t mind riding in the park for a while after dinner.  I’ve got a date about four o’clock.  But I’m not a monomaniac, Nelly, and nothing’s getting on my nerves.  I never felt better or happier in my life.  I feel as if I’d been blind always, been sort of groping my way, and had just got my eyes open to see what a wonderful thing life really is.”

“Do you mean you’ve got what they used to call ‘religion,’ Court?  ’Hit the trail,’ as it were?” Tennelly asked as if he were delicately inquiring about some insidious tubercular or cancerous trouble.  He seemed half ashamed to connect such a perilous possibility with his honored friend.

Courtland shook his head.  “Not that I know of, Nelly.  I never attended one of those big evangelistic meetings in my life, and I don’t know exactly what ‘religion,’ as they call it, is, so I can’t lay claim to anything of that sort.  What I mean is, simply, I’ve met God face to face and found He’s my friend.  That’s about the size of it, and it makes things all look different.  I’d like to tell you about it just as it happened some time, Tennelly, when you’re ready to hear.”

“Wait awhile, Court,” said Tennelly, half shrinking.  “Wait till you’ve had a little more time to think it over.  Then if you like I’ll listen.”

“Very well,” said Courtland, quietly.  “But I want you to know it’s something real.  It’s no sick fancies.”

“All right!” said Tennelly.  “I’ll let you know when I’m ready to hear.”

* * * * *

Late that afternoon, when Courtland entered the hospital, the sunshine was flooding the great stained-glass window and glorifying the face of the Christ with the outstretched hands.  Off in a near-by ward some one was singing to the patients, and the corridors seemed hushed to listen: 

     The healing of the seamless dress
       Is by our beds of pain. 
     We touch Him in life’s throng and press
       And we are whole again!

All this recognition of the Christ in the world, and somehow it had never come to his consciousness before!  He felt abashed at his blindness.  And if he had been so long, surely there was hope for Tennelly to see, too.  Somehow, he wanted Tennelly to see!

CHAPTER XVII

Bonnie Brentwood was awake and expecting him, the nurse said.  She lay propped up by pillows, draped about with a dainty, frilly dressing-sacque that looked too frivolous for Nurse Wright, yet could surely have come from no other source.  The golden hair was lying in two long braids, one over each shoulder, and there was a faint flush of expectancy on her pale cheeks.

“You have been so good to me!” she said.  “It has been wonderful for a stranger to go out of his way so much.”

“Please don’t let’s talk about that!” said Courtland.  “It’s been only a pleasure to be of service.  Now I want to know how you are.  I’ve been expecting to hear that you had pneumonia or something dreadful after that awful exposure.”