A sort of band which had seemed to be fastened around Jane Brown’s head for days suddenly removed itself to her heart, which became extremely irregular.

“And I want to say this,” went on Twenty-two, still in a savage tone.  He was horribly frightened, so he blustered.  “I don’t care whether you want me or not, you’ve got to have me.  I’m so much in love with you that it hurts.”

Suddenly Jane Brown’s heart settled down into a soft rhythmic beating that was like a song.  After all, life was made up of love and work, and love came first.

She faced Twenty-two with brave eyes.

“I love you, too—­so much that it hurts.”

The gentleman across the hall, sitting up in bed, with an angry thumb on the bell, was electrified to see, on the glass door across, the silhouette of a young lady without a cap go into the arms of a very large, masculine silhouette in a dressing-gown.  He heard, too, the thump of a falling cane.

Late that night Jane Brown, by devious ways, made her way back to H ward.  Johnny was there, a strange Johnny with a bandaged head, but with open eyes.

At dawn, the dawn of the day when Jane Brown was to leave the little world of the hospital for a little world of two, consisting of a man and a woman, the night nurse found her there, asleep, her fingers still on Johnny’s thin wrist.

She did not report it.

JANE

I

Having retired to a hospital to sulk, Jane remained there.  The family came and sat by her bed uncomfortably and smoked, and finally retreated with defeat written large all over it, leaving Jane to the continued possession of Room 33, a pink kimono with slippers to match, a hand-embroidered face pillow with a rose-coloured bow on the corner, and a young nurse with a gift of giving Jane daily the appearance of a strawberry and vanilla ice rising from a meringue of bed linen.

Jane’s complaint was temper.  The family knew this, and so did Jane, although she had an annoying way of looking hurt, a gentle heart-brokenness of speech that made the family, under the pretence of getting a match, go out into the hall and swear softly under its breath.  But it was temper, and the family was not deceived.  Also, knowing Jane, the family was quite ready to believe that while it was swearing in the hall, Jane was biting holes in the hand-embroidered face pillow in Room 33.

It had finally come to be a test of endurance.  Jane vowed to stay at the hospital until the family on bended knee begged her to emerge and to brighten the world again with her presence.  The family, being her father, said it would be damned if it would, and that if Jane cared to live on anaemic chicken broth, oatmeal wafers and massage twice a day for the rest of her life, why, let her.