Later on in the evening Mac and Doctor Steele got Dane upstairs.
“I wonder why he had to find that thing?“ said the doctor, looking down upon him as he lay on the bed. “Borrow came down half an hour before. It wouldn’t have hurt him to pick it up.”
“Oh, there ain’t no reason in this ——— ——— world,” growled Mac.
IV
Valerie also felt there was no reason in the world when she read that Dane had run into that calamitous object. Her first feeling was one of blind rage that such things were always imposed on the people who could least endure them. She stamped about the garden that night shouting her little defiance at the stars. She was roused against the fates on behalf of Dane. But when this mood wore itself out she was a little weary, and though she would not have admitted it, a little resentful that he should be so sensitive to hurt.
As it grew near lunch time the next day she hoped she was going to hear from him. Not only because she missed him, but because it would mean that he was better. She had not worked well that morning. His personality seemed to clutch at her through the walls. She might have worked if she had known he was away, but now the thought of him lying alone there somewhere distracted her.
But he did not appear at lunch. She went out to garden afterwards, for nothing so well soothed her.
At half-past four Lee called from the verandah. “Your tea, Meesis Barrington.”
There was no sign of Dane, and almost before she had
