“Does he play much poker?  Dr. Dillon told me that Dr. Gould wanted him to play——­”

“Dillon told you what?  Where’d you meet Dillon?  He’s just come to town.”

“He and his wife were at Mr. Pollock’s tonight.”

“Say, uh, what’d you think of them?  Didn’t Dillon strike you as pretty light-waisted?”

“Why no.  He seemed intelligent.  I’m sure he’s much more wide-awake than our dentist.”

“Well now, the old man is a good dentist.  He knows his business.  And Dillon——­I wouldn’t cuddle up to the Dillons too close, if I were you.  All right for Pollock, and that’s none of our business, but we——­I think I’d just give the Dillons the glad hand and pass ’em up.”

“But why?  He isn’t a rival.”

“That’s—­all—­right!” Kennicott was aggressively awake now.  “He’ll work right in with Westlake and McGanum.  Matter of fact, I suspect they were largely responsible for his locating here.  They’ll be sending him patients, and he’ll send all that he can get hold of to them.  I don’t trust anybody that’s too much hand-in-glove with Westlake.  You give Dillon a shot at some fellow that’s just bought a farm here and drifts into town to get his teeth looked at, and after Dillon gets through with him, you’ll see him edging around to Westlake and McGanum, every time!”

Carol reached for her blouse, which hung on a chair by the bed.  She draped it about her shoulders, and sat up studying Kennicott, her chin in her hands.  In the gray light from the small electric bulb down the hall she could see that he was frowning.

“Will, this is—­I must get this straight.  Some one said to me the other day that in towns like this, even more than in cities, all the doctors hate each other, because of the money——­”

“Who said that?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“I’ll bet a hat it was your Vida Sherwin.  She’s a brainy woman, but she’d be a damn sight brainier if she kept her mouth shut and didn’t let so much of her brains ooze out that way.”

“Will!  O Will!  That’s horrible!  Aside from the vulgarity——­Some ways, Vida is my best friend.  Even if she had said it.  Which, as a matter of fact, she didn’t.”  He reared up his thick shoulders, in absurd pink and green flannelette pajamas.  He sat straight, and irritatingly snapped his fingers, and growled: 

“Well, if she didn’t say it, let’s forget her.  Doesn’t make any difference who said it, anyway.  The point is that you believe it.  God!  To think you don’t understand me any better than that!  Money!”

("This is the first real quarrel we’ve ever had,” she was agonizing.)

He thrust out his long arm and snatched his wrinkly vest from a chair.  He took out a cigar, a match.  He tossed the vest on the floor.  He lighted the cigar and puffed savagely.  He broke up the match and snapped the fragments at the foot-board.

She suddenly saw the foot-board of the bed as the foot-stone of the grave of love.