The rose fell, and was caught.  Von Plaanden bowed low over it.  Then he straightened to the military salute, and so rode out of the door and out of the girl’s life.

“Men are strange creatures,” mused the philosopher of twenty.  “You think they are perfectly horrid, and suddenly they show their other side to you, and you think they are perfectly splendid.  I wish I knew a little more about real people.”

She confessed to no more specific thought, but as she descended the stairs to bid farewell to the blushing and deprecatory Britons, she was eager to have it over with, and to come to speech with her beetle man, who had so strangely flamed into action.  The Unspeakable Perk!  As the name formed on her lips, she smiled tenderly.  With sad lack of logic, she was ready to discard every suspicion of him that she had harbored, merely on the strength of his reckless outbreak of patriotism.  She looked about the patio, but he was not there.  Sherwen came out of a side door, his face puckered with anxiety.

“Where is Mr. Perkins?” she asked.

“In there.”  He nodded back over his shoulder.  “Your father is with him.  Perhaps you’d better go in.”

With a chill at her heart, Polly entered the room, where Mr. Brewster bent a troubled face over a head swathed in reddened bandages.

Very crumpled and limp looked the Unspeakable Perk, bunched humpily upon the little sofa.  His goggles had fallen off, and lay on the floor beside him, contriving somehow to look momentously solemn and important all by themselves.  His face was turned half away, and, as Polly’s gaze fell upon it, she felt again that queer catch at her heart.

“Wouldn’t know it was the same chap, would you?” whispered Mr. Brewster.

The girl picked up the grotesque spectacles, cradling them for an instant in her hands before she put them aside and leaned over the quiet form.

“Came staggering in, and just collapsed down there,” continued her father huskily.  “Lord, I wouldn’t lose that boy after this for a million dollars!”

“Why do you talk that way?” she demanded sharply.  “What has happened?  Did he faint?”

“Just collapsed.  When I tried to rouse him, he kicked me in the chest,” replied the magnate, with somber seriousness.

“Oh, you goose of a dad!” There was a tremulous note in Polly’s low laughter.  “That’s all right, then.  Can’t you see he’s dead for sleep, poor beetle man?”

“Do you think so?” said Mr. Brewster, vastly relieved.  “Hadn’t I better go out for a doctor, and make sure?”

She shook her head.

“Let him rest.  Hand me that pillow, please, dad.”

With soft little pushes and wedges she worked it under the scientist’s head.  “What a dreadful botch of bandaging!  He looks so pale!  I wonder if I couldn’t get those cloths off.  Lend me your knife, dad.”

Gently as she worked, the head on the pillow began to sway, and the lips to move.