building into sight. The girl’s face grew lighter and lighter; in the shadow of the bus it seemed to Peter actually to shine. “Dear old San,” she said under her breath. “Heigh-ho! it’s good to get back!”

Before Peter could fathom any reason for this unaccountable rejoicing, the bus had stopped and the girl and suitcase had vanished. Wearily he came back to his own reason for being there, and docilely he allowed the porter to shoulder his luggage and conduct him within.

Three days passed—three days in which Peter thought little and felt much. He had been passed about among the staff of doctors very much like a delectable dish, and sampled by all. Half a dozen had taken him in hand. He had been apportioned a treatment, a diet, a bath hour, and a nurse. Looking back on those three days—and looking forward to a continuous protraction of the same—he could see less reason than ever for coaxing an existence out of life. Life meant to him work—efficient, telling work—and companionship—sharing with a congenial soul recreation, opinions, and meals—and some day, love. Well—what of these was left him? It was then that he remembered the gray girl’s advice in the omnibus and went out to find Hennessy and the swans.

His nurse was at supper, so he was mercifully free; moreover it was the emptiest time of day for out-of-doors. A few straggling patients were knocking prescribed golf-balls about the links, and a scattering of nurses were hurrying in with their wheel-chairs. Half-way between the links and the last building was the pond, shaded by pines and flanked by a miniature rustic rest-house, and thither Peter went. On a willow stump emerging from the pond he found Hennessy, as wrinkled as a butternut, with a thatch of gray hair, a mouth shirred into a small, open ellipse, and eyes full of irrepressible twinkles. He was seated tailor fashion on the stump, a tin platter of bread across his knees and the swans circling about him. He looked every whit as Irish as his name, and he was scolding and blarneying the birds by turn.

“Go-wan, there, ye feathered heathen! Can’t ye be lettin’ them that has good manners get a morsel once in a while? Faith, ye’ll be havin’ old Doc Willum afther ye with his stomach cure if ye don’t watch out.” He looked over his shoulder and caught Peter’s gaze. “Sure, birds or humans, they all have to be coaxed or scolded into keepin’ healthy, I’m thinkin’, and Hennessy’s head nurse to the swans,” he ended, with a chuckle.

But there was something quite different on Peter’s mind. “Has one of the patients—a young person in gray—been here lately? I mean have you seen her about any time?”

Hennessy shook a puzzled head. “A young gray patient, ye say? Sure there might be a hundred—that’s not over-distinguishin’. I leave it to ye, sir, just a gray patient is not over-distinguishin’.”

Peter reflected. “It was a quiet, cloister kind of gray, but her eyes were not—cloistered. They were the shiningest—”

A chuckle from Hennessy brought him to an abrupt finish. “Eyes? Gray? Patient? Ha, ha! Did ye hear that, Brian Boru?” and he flicked his cap at a gray swan. “Sure, misther, that’s no patient. ’Tis Leerie—herself.”

“Leerie?” The name sounded absurd to Peter, and slightly reminiscent of something, he could not tell what.

“Aye, Leerie. Real name, Sheila O’Leary—as good a name as Hennessy. But they named her Leerie her probation year. In course she’s Irish an’ not Scotch, an’ I never heard tell of a lass afore that went ’round a-lightin’ street lamps, but for all that the name fits. Ye mind grown-ups an’ childher alike watch for her to come ’round.”

“A nurse,” repeated Peter, dully.

“Aye. An’ she come back three days since, Heaven be praised! afther bein’ gone three years.”

“Three years,” repeated Peter again. “Why was she gone three years?”

Hennessy eyed him narrowly for a moment. “A lot of blitherin’ fools sent her away, that’s what, an’ she not much more than graduated. Suspension, they called it.”

“Suspension for what?”

The shirring in Hennessy’s lips tightened, and he drew his breath in and out in a sort of asthmatic whistle. This was the only sign of emotion ever betrayed by Hennessy. When he spoke again he fairly whistled his words. “If ye want to know what for—ye can ask some one else. Good night.” And with a bang to the platter Hennessy was away before Peter could stop him.

Alone with the swans, Peter lingered a moment to consider. A nurse. The gray person a nurse! And sent away for some—some—Peter’s mind groped inadequately for a reason. Pshaw! He could smile at the absurdity of his interest. What did it matter—or she matter—or anything matter? For a man who has been given up, who has been sent away to a sanitarium to finish with life as speedily and decently as he can, to stand on one leg by a pond, for all the world like a swan himself, and wonder about a girl he had seen but once, in a sanitarium omnibus, was absurd. And the name Leerie? Of course they had taken it from Stevenson, but it suited. Yes, Hennessy was right, it certainly suited.

A rustle of white skirts coming down the path attracted his attention. It was his nurse, through supper, coming like a commandant to take him in charge. Thirty-seven, in a sanitarium, with a nurse attendant! Peter groaned inwardly. It was monstrous, a cowardly, blackguard attack of an unthinking Creator on a human being—a decent human being—who might be—who wanted to be—of some use in the world. For a breath he wanted to roar forth blasphemy after blasphemy against the universe and its Maker, but in the next breath he suddenly realized how little he cared. With a smile almost tragically senile, he let the nurse lead him away.

And all the while a girl was leaning over the sill of the little rest-house, watching him. It was a girl with a demure mouth, a determined chin, and eyes that shone, who answered impartially to the names of Sheila, Miss O’Leary, or Leerie. The gray was changed for the white uniform and cap of a graduate nurse, and the change was becoming. She had recognized him at first with casual amusement as she watched him fill her prescription of Hennessy and the swans, but after Hennessy had gone she watched him with all the intuitive sympathy of her womanhood and the understanding of her profession. Not one of the emotions that swept Peter’s face but registered full on the girl’s sensibilities: the illuminating interest in something, bewilderment, hopelessness, despair, agony, and a final weary surrender to the inevitable—they were all there. But it was the strange, haunting look in the deep-set eyes that made the girl sit up, alert and curious.

“’Phobia,” she said, softly, under her breath. “Not over-fed liver or alcoholic heart, but ’phobia, I’ll wager, poor childman! Wonder how the doctors have diagnosed him!”

She learned how a few days later when Miss Maxwell, the superintendent of nurses, stopped her in the second-floor corridor. “My dear, I should like to change you from Madam Courot to another case for a few days. Miss Jacobs is on now and—”

“Coppy?” Sheila O’Leary broke in abruptly, a smile of amusement breaking the demureness of her lips. “Needn’t explain, Miss Max. I see. Young male patient, unattached. Frequent pulse-takings and cerebral massage, with late evening strolls in the pine woods. Business office takes notice and a change of nurse recommended. Poor Coppy—ripping nurse! If