She did go after a while, though so noiselessly that when he opened his eyes it was with the fear that he should see her still bending over the little embroidery frame at the window.  Finding himself alone, he sat up in bed and gave the broken head an opportunity to blot him out if it could.  For a little space the walls of the room became as the interior of a hollow peg-top, spinning furiously with a noise like the rushing of many waters.  After the surroundings had resumed their normal figurings he rose to his knees.  There was another grapple with the whirling peg-top, and again he mastered the dizzying confusion.  Made bold by success, he got his feet on the floor and stood up, clinging to the brass foot-rail of the bed until the unstable encompassments had once more come to rest.

By this time he was able to conquer all save the throbbing headache.  Shuffling first to one door and then to the other, he shot the bolts against intrusion.  Then he staggered across to the dressing-case and took a look at himself in the glass.  The bandaged head, with its haggard, pain-distorted face grimacing back at him, extorted a grunt of sardonic disapproval, but the mirror answered the query which had sent him stumbling across to it.  The bandage was comparatively small and tightly drawn; a soft hat could be worn over it—­the hat would cover and decently hide it.

Next he found his clothes, those he had been wearing at the time of the accident.  Somebody had been thoughtful enough to have them cleaned and pressed; from which he argued that the plunging fall on the wet asphalt had been demoralizing in more ways than one.  Continuing the experimental venture, he walked back and forth and up and down until he could do it without clutching at the bed-rails to save himself from falling.  Then he reshot the door-bolts and went back to bed to await developments.

The first of these came when Patricia brought his luncheon.  He had been wondering if she would be the one to come; wondering and hoping.  With the unfilial purpose driving him on, there were added twinges at the thought of his father’s wife going on piling the mountain of obligation higher and still higher by waiting upon him, and thus reminding him at every turn of the adder fable.  With Patricia it was different.

“Good morning,” he grimaced, when Patricia came in with the daintily appointed server.  “Getting a bit more of the first-aid practice, are you?”

“I am obeying orders,” she flashed back, when she had shaken up the pillows and placed the appetizing meal within his reach.  “Mrs. Blount said I’d probably have a less disturbing influence upon you than she would.  Shall I feed you?”

“Good heavens, no!  I’m not that near dead, I hope!  If you don’t believe it, you may sit down and watch me eat—­if you’re not missing your own luncheon.”

“Nurses have no regular meal-times,” she retorted.  And then:  “You are feeling a great deal better, aren’t you?”