About two weeks after the accident there was a change in the tone of the physicians who had been giving almost all their time to Martin’s case.  There was no visible change in Martin, but that fact in itself was so surprising that it was construed into a definite hope that he would live.

Not as he had lived, they warned his wife.  It would be but a restricted life; tied to his couch, or permitted, at best, to move about within a small boundary on crutches.

“Martin!” his wife exclaimed piteously, when this was first discussed.  “He has always been so strong—­so independent!  He would rather—­he would infinitely rather be dead!” But her mind was busy grasping the possibilities, too.  “He won’t suffer too much?” she asked, fearfully.

They hastened to assure her that the chance of his even partial recovery was still slight, but that in case of his convalescence Martin need not necessarily suffer.

Another day or two went by, in the silent, rainwrapped house under the trees; days of quiet footsteps, and whispering, and the lisping of wood fires.  Then Martin suddenly was conscious, knew his wife, languidly smiled at her, thanked the doctors for occasional ease from pain.

“Peter—­I’m sorry.  It’s terrible for you—­terrible!” he said, in his new, hoarse, gentle voice, when he first saw Peter.  They marvelled among themselves that he knew that Alix was gone.  But to Cherry, in one of the long hours that she spent, sitting beside him, and holding his big, weak, strangely white hand, he explained, one day.  “I knew she was killed,” he said, out of a silence.  “I thought we both were!”

“How did she ever happen to do it?” Cherry said.  “She was always so sure of herself—­even when she drove fast!”

“I don’t know,” he answered.  “It was all like a flash, of course!  I never watched her drive—­I had such confidence in her!”

His interest dropped; she saw that the tide of pain was slowly rising again, glanced at the clock.  It was two; he might not have relief until four.  In his own eyes she saw reflected the apprehension of her own.

“You might ask Peter to play some of that—­that rambly stuff he was playing yesterday?” he suggested.  Cherry, only too happy to have him want anything, to have him helped by anything, flew to find Peter.  Busy with one of the trays that were really beginning to interest and please the invalid now, she told herself that the house was a different place, now that one nurse was gone, the doctors coming only for brief calls, and the dear, familiar sound of the old piano echoing throughout the rooms.

Martin came from the fiery furnace changed in soul and body.  It was a thin, gentle, strangely patient man who was propped in bed for his Thanksgiving dinner, and whose pain-worn face turned with an appreciative smile to the decorations and the gifts that made his room cheerful.  His thick beard had grown; for weeks they had not dared disturb him to cut it, and as he recovered, Cherry found it so becoming that she had persuaded him to let it remain.  He wore a blue-and-gray wrapper that was his wife’s gift; the sling was gone, but his hands were oddly thin and white.