During the first days of his recovery he did nothing but enjoy the creeping stir of life.  Respiration was a soft physical pleasure.  In the nights, so long he could not sleep them through, it was delightful to lie upon a cloud that floated lazily down the sky.  In the depths of this lassitude the thought of Enid would start up like a sweet, burning pain, and he would drift out into the darkness upon sensations he could neither prevent nor control.  So long as he could plough, pitch hay, or break his back in the wheatfield, he had been master; but now he was overtaken by himself.  Enid was meant for him and she had come for him; he would never let her go.  She should never know how much he longed for her.  She would be slow to feel even a little of what he was feeling; he knew that.  It would take a long while.  But he would be infinitely patient, infinitely tender of her.  It should be he who suffered, not she.  Even in his dreams he never wakened her, but loved her while she was still and unconscious like a statue.  He would shed love upon her until she warmed and changed without knowing why.

Sometimes when Enid sat unsuspecting beside him, a quick blush swept across his face and he felt guilty toward her, meek and humble, as if he must beg her forgiveness for something.  Often he was glad when she went away and left him alone to think about her.  Her presence brought him sanity, and for that he ought to be grateful.  When he was with her, he thought how she was to be the one who would put him right with the world and make him fit into the life about him.  He had troubled his mother and disappointed his father, His marriage would be the first natural, dutiful, expected thing he had ever done.  It would be the beginning of usefulness and content; as his mother’s oft-repeated Psalm said, it would restore his soul.  Enid’s willingness to listen to him he could scarcely doubt.  Her devotion to him during his illness was probably regarded by her friends as equivalent to an engagement.

V

Claude’s first trip to Frankfort was to get his hair cut.  After leaving the barber-shop he presented himself, glistening with bayrum, at Jason Royce’s office.  Mr. Royce, in the act of closing his safe, turned and took the young man by the hand.

“Hello, Claude, glad to see you around again!  Sickness can’t do much to a husky young farmer like you.  With old fellows, it’s another story.  I’m just starting off to have a look at my alfalfa, south of the river.  Get in and go along with me.”

They went out to the open car that stood by the sidewalk, and when they were spinning along between fields of ripening grain Claude broke the silence.  “I expect you know what I want to see you about, Mr. Royce?”

The older man shook his head.  He had been preoccupied and grim ever since they started.

“Well,” Claude went on modestly, “it oughtn’t to surprise you to hear that I’ve set my heart on Enid.  I haven’t said anything to her yet, but if you’re not against me, I’m going to try to persuade her to marry me.”