He lay back among the crimson pillows in his big chair, close beside the fire, with his eyes on the burning logs. A tablet and pen lay in his lap, and he had written a few paragraphs, but he was listening now to certain sounds which came from below stairs: voices, laughter, scurryings up and down the hall and staircase; then the slam of a heavy door, the tuneful ring of sleighbells in a rapid decrescendo down the street, and absolute silence within the house. Three times in the last fifteen minutes before the door closed somebody had looked in upon the occupant of the big chair to say something like this:

"Oh, Jerry—sorry we couldn't spend Nan's last evening with you. Too bad this wretched Van Antwerp dance had to come to-night—Christmas Eve, too. Busy, aren't you, as usual? At work on those sketches of country life in winter? You clever boy—who but you could make so much out of so little? Anything we can do for you before we are off? Nan hates to go, since it's the very last evening of her visit. She thought we all ought to give up and stay with you, but we told her you disliked to be 'babied.' Well—good-night, old fellow. Don't write too late. You know the doctor thinks plenty of sleep is part of your cure."

That was the sort of thing they had been saying to him for a year now—a year. And he seemed no nearer health than when he had been sent home from his gloriously busy, abounding life in New York, where he was succeeding brilliantly, far beyond anybody's expectations—except those of the few knowing ones who had recognized the genius in him in his school and college days. But he had never given up. Invalided in body, his mind worked unceasingly; and a certain part of the literary work he had been doing he did still. He said it kept him from going off his head.

When the stillness of the usually noisy house had become oppressive he took up his tablet and pen again. He wrote a sentence or two—slowly; then another—more slowly; and drew an impatient line through them all. He tossed the tablet over to a table near at hand and sat staring into the fire. Certain lines about his mouth grew deep.

A knock on his door roused him, and he realized that it had sounded before. "Come in," he called, and the door opened and closed behind him. An unmistakable sound, as of the soft rustle of delicate skirts, swept across the floor and paused behind his chair. He drew himself up among his pillows, and strained his neck to look over his shoulder. A young face, full of life and colour, laughed down into his.

"You?" he said in an amazed breath. "You? Why, Nan!"

He reached up one hand and took hers and drew her with his slight strength around where he could see her. It did not take much strength. She came, laughing still, and sweeping a graceful low bend before him.

"Don't ask me why," she said with a shake of her head. "I didn't want to go. I knew I wouldn't go all the time I was dressing. But I dressed. I knew I could argue with them better when I got this gown on. I think I have rather a regal air in it, don't you?"

"I could tell better if you were not wearing that shapeless thing over it."

"Oh, but I've taken off my gloves, and I can't stand bare arms and shoulders here at home." She shrugged the shoulders under the thin silken garment with which she had covered them.

"And you're not going to the Van Antwerps' at all?"

"Certainly not. I preferred to stay at home."

"Why?"

"I told you not to ask me why. But I suppose you won't talk about anything else until you know."

She sat down opposite him before the fire, looking up at the great branches of holly on the chimney-piece above, their scarlet berries gleaming saucily among the rich green of their leaves. She reached up and pulled off a spray; then she glanced at him. He was silently surveying her. In her delicate blue gauzy gown she was something to look at in the fire-glow.

"I wanted to spend my last evening here with you," she said.

He smiled back at her. "Three people looked in here this evening and told me you thought you ought."

She answered indignantly: "I didn't say I ought. I didn't think it. I wanted to. And I didn't want them to stay. That is why I let them all array themselves before I refused to go."

He was still smiling. "Delicate flattery," he said, "adapted to an invalid. You should never let an invalid think you pity him—at least not a man-invalid who got knocked out while playing a vigorous game for all it was worth."

"Jerry," she said, looking full at him out of a pair of eyes which were capable of saying eloquent things quite by themselves, "do you think all the hours I've spent with you in this month I've been visiting Hester were spent from pity?"

"I hope not," he answered lightly. "I'm sure not. We've had some pleasant times, haven't we?"

She turned from him without speaking, and, clasping her hands loosely in front of her, bent forward and studied the fire. Presently she got up and took a fresh log from the basket.

"Be careful," he warned, as she stooped to lay it in place. "Put it on gently. The sparks might fly, and that cobweb dress of yours——"

She laid the log across the other half-burnt sticks, and started back with a little cry as a dozen brilliant points of flame flew toward her.

"Don't do that again," he protested sternly, with nothing of the invalid in his voice. "I don't like to see you do such things when I couldn't stir to save you no matter what happened."

She stood looking down at him. "Jerry," she said, "I'll tell you why I stayed to-night. I wanted to talk with you about something. I want your help."

His eyes told her that he would give it if he could.

"Do you mind if I sit on a pillow here before the fire?" she asked, bringing one from the couch. Jerry had plenty of pillows. Since his breakdown every girl who had ever known him had sent him a fresh one.

"Somehow I can talk better," she explained.

She settled herself on her cushion, her blue skirts lying in light folds about her, her chin on her hand, her elbow on her knee.

"I always go straight to the point," she said. "I never know how to lead artfully up to a thing. Jerry, you know I go to Paris in January, to do some special work in illustrating?"

"Yes."

"I go with Aunt Elizabeth, and we shall live very quietly and properly, and I shall not have any of the—trials—so many young women workers have. My work will keep me very busy, and, I think, happy. I mean it shall. But, Jerry—I want something. You know you have always known me, because I was Hester's friend."

"Is this 'straight to the point'?" he asked, and there was a gleam of fun in his eyes, though his lips were sober. But his interest was unmistakable.

"Very straight. But we have never been special friends, you and I."

"Haven't we? I congratulated myself we had."

"Not what I mean by that word." She sat looking into the fire for some little time, while he remained motionless, watching her, his eyes shaded by his hand. At length she said very earnestly, still staring fireward, while her cheeks took on a slight access of colour:

"I want to feel I have a friend—one friend—a real one, whom I leave behind me here—who will understand me and write to me, and whom I can count on—differently from the way I count on other friends."

He was studying her absorbedly. There came into his eyes a peculiar look as she made her frank statement.

"Then you haven't just that sort of a friend among all the men you know at home?"

"Not a single one. And I miss it. Not because I have ever had it," she added quickly.

He was silent for a little while, then he said very quietly: "You are offering me a good deal, Nan. Do you realize just how much? Friendship—such friendship—means more to me now than it ever did before."

"Does it?" she asked with equal quietness. "I'm glad of that."

"Because," he went on gravely, "I realize that it is the only thing I can ever have, and it must take the place of all I once—hoped for."

"Oh, why do you say that?" she cried impetuously.

"Since you are to be my friend now—my special friend—I can tell you what Doctor McDonough told me just two days ago. May I tell you that? I have told and shall tell no one else. Before you take the vows"—he smiled grimly—"you should know what you are accepting."

"Tell me."

"He said I might be better—much better—but I could never hope to be—my old self again."

"Oh, Jerry! Oh, Jerry!" Her voice was almost a sob. She turned about and reached up both hands to him, clasping his with a warm and tender pressure.

"Is that what your friendship means?" he asked, holding her hands closely and looking down steadily into her eyes while his own grew brilliant. "If it does—it is going to be something a man might give up a good deal for."

"Oh, how can you take such a cruel disappointment so?" she breathed. "And to hear it just at Christmas, too. I've said all along that you were just the bravest person I ever knew. But now!—Jerry, I'm not worthy to be your friend."

"Ah, I'll not let you take back what you offered me. If you knew how I've wanted to ask it——"

"Have you, really?" she asked so eagerly that he turned his head away for a moment and set his lips firmly together as if he feared he might presently be tempted to go beyond those strait boundaries of friendship. Somehow from the lips of such a girl as Nan this sort of thing was the most appealing flattery; at the same time it was unquestionably sincere.

"So you will seal the compact? Think it over carefully. I can never give you the strong arm a well man could."

"If you will teach me to acquire the sort of strength you have learned yourself," she said—and there was a hint of mistiness about those eyes of hers—"you will have given me something worth while."

Presently they were talking of her journey, to be begun on the morrow; of her work, in which she had come in the last year to remarkable success; of his work—the part which he could do and would continue to do, he said, with added vigour. They talked quietly but earnestly, and each time she looked up into his face she saw there a new brightness, something beyond the mere patient acceptance of his hard trial.

"Jerry," she said all at once, breaking off in the midst of a discussion of certain phases of the illustrator's art, "you don't know how suddenly rich I feel. All the while you were doing such wonderful, beautiful things with your pen in New York and being made so much of, I was thinking, 'What an inspiration Jerrold Fullerton would be as a real friend.' But all the girls were——"

He laughed. "They won't trouble you, now."

"But your friendship is worth more now than then."

He shook his head.

"It is—because you are more than you were then."

"I'm a mere wreck of what I was, Nan." He did not say it bitterly, but he could not quite keep the sadness out of the uncompromising phrase.

She looked up at him, studying his face intently. It had always been a remarkably fine face, and on it the suffering of the past year had done a certain work which added to its beauty. He did not look ill, but the refinement which illness sometimes lends to faces of a somewhat too strongly cut type had softened it into an exceeding charm. Out of it the eyes shone with an undaunted spirit which told of hidden fires.

"I am glad a share in the wreckage falls to me," she said softly.

"Nan," he told her, while his lips broke irresistibly into a smile again, "I believe you are deliberately trying to burn a sweet incense before me to-night. Just how fragrant it is to a fellow in my shape I can't tell you. You would never do it if I were on my feet, I appreciate that; but I'm very grateful just the same."

"I'd like," she said with eyes which fell now to the hands folded in her lap—and the droop of her head as he saw it, with the turned-away profile cut like an exquisite silhouette against the fire, was burnt into his memory afterward—"to have you remember this Christmas Eve—as I shall."

"Remember it!"

"Shall you?"

"Shall I!"

"Ah—who is deliberately trying to say nice things now?" But she said it rather faintly.

He lay back among his pillows with a long breath. "So you go to-morrow morning?"

"Early—at six o'clock. You will not see me. And I must go now. See, it is after eleven. Think of their making me go out this evening when I must be up at five and travel the next forty-eight hours. On Christmas Day, too. Isn't that too bad? But that's the price of my staying over to spend Christmas Eve with Jerry Fullerton—like the foolish girl that I am."

She rose and stood before him.

"Would you mind slipping off that—domino?" he requested. "I'd like to see you just as all the other fellows would have seen you if you had gone to the Van Antwerps'."

Smiling, and flushing a little, she drew off the silken garment, and the firelight bathed her softly rounded shoulders and arms in a rosy glow. He looked at her silently for a minute, until she said again that she must go, and took a step toward him, smiling down at him and holding out both hands.

"I don't know how I can spare my friend, when I've just found her," he said, searching her face with an intentness she found it difficult to bear. "I suppose I ought not to ask it, but—it's Christmas Eve, you know—and—you'll give me one more thing to remember—won't you, Nan?"

She bent, like a warm-hearted child, and laid her lips lightly upon his forehead, but he caught her hands.

"Is that the proper degree for friendship—and you feel that more would be too much?"

She hesitated; then, as his grasp drew her, she stooped lower, blushing beautifully, to give the kiss upon his lips. But it was not the breath of a caress she would have made it. Invalids are sometimes possessed of unsuspected reserves of strength.

She turned away then in a pretty confusion, said, "Good-night," and went slowly toward the door.

"Oh, come back!" he cried. "Tell me—you will write often?"

"Oh, yes; every—month."

"Month? Won't you write every mail?"

"Oh, Jerry!"

"Every week, then?"

"Will you?"

"I will, whether you do or not."

"Your ideas of friendship——"

"Are they too exacting?"

"No-o," she admitted, as if reluctantly. She was behind him now, her hands clasped together tightly, her eyes glowing with the light of a frightened purpose which was over-mastering her. He tried to turn and see her, but she defeated this.

"Please come here," he begged.

She was silent, trying to breathe more naturally.

"Please——"

"What good will it do?" she asked at last. "I shall have to go, and you—won't——"

"Won't—what?"

She crept up close behind his chair.

"—say it," she whispered.

He reached out his hand with a commanding gesture. "Nan, come here. Say—what?"

She bent over the back of his chair and laid a soft, trembling hand on each side of his face.

"Please say it," she breathed.

He seized her hands and drew them to his lips. "Nan, you are tempting me almost beyond my power. Do you mean to tempt me? Are you trying to?"

She leaned low, so that her breath swept his cheek, and whispered, "Yes."

"Oh, my God," he groaned. "Nan—are you insane? What if I say it—then how much worse will it be? I can bear it better as it is now—and you—can't mean it."

"Say it!" came the breath in his ear again.

He was silent for a while, breathing heavily. Presently he began to speak in a quiet tone whose vibrations showed, nevertheless, the most rigid self-control. He still held her hands, resting there upon his shoulders, but he made no further effort to see her face.

"Nan," he said, "this friendship you give me is the dearest thing I ever knew. It is worth everything to me. Let me keep it while you go away for your year of work. Be the warmest friend to me you know how, and write me everything about yourself. Meanwhile—keep your heart free for—the man will surely come to claim it some day—a man who will be worthy of you in every way, soul, mind, and—body. I shall be happy in your——"

Her hand pulled itself away from his, and was laid with a gentle insistence upon his mouth.

"Jerry," she said very softly, "that's enough—please. I understand. That had to be said. I knew you would say it. It's what you think you ought to say, of course. But—it's said now. You needn't repeat it. For it's not the thing—I'm waiting for you to say."

"Nan——"

"Would you make a poor girl do it all?" she questioned, with a suggestion of both laughter and tears in her voice.

"But, Nan——"

"I'm not used to it," she urged. "It's very embarrassing. And I ought to be asleep this minute, getting ready for my early start. I'm not quite sure that I shall sleep if you say it"—her voice dropped to a whisper again—"but I'm sure I shall not if—you—don't."

"My dear girl——"

"That's hardly warm enough, is it—under the circumstances—when you won't see me for a year? Jerry—a whole year——"

"Nan—for the love of Heaven come around here!"

"Not so much for the love of Heaven as——"

"No—for the love of you—you—you!"

She came at last—and then she saw his eyes. But she could not meet them after the first glance. She lay in his arms, held there by a grasp so strong that it astonished her beyond measure. So, for a time; then he began to speak—in her ear now, where, in its pinkness, with a little brown curl touching his lips, it listened.

"You've made me say it, dear, when for your sake I would have kept it back. But you know—you must know, nothing can come of it."

He heard her murmur, "Why?"

"You know why."

"I don't."

He drew a deep breath.

"Don't you want me?" she asked—into his shoulder.

"Want you!"

"You've everything to offer me."

"Nan——"

"Everything I want. Jerry"—she lifted her head and looked for an instant into his eyes—"I shall die of heartache if you won't offer it."

"A wreck of a life——"

"I won't let you call it that again," she flashed. "You—Jerrold Fullerton—whose merest scrawl is reviewed by every literary editor in the land. Do you think you can't do still better work with—with me?"

"But you wouldn't be marrying Jerrold Fullerton's mind alone."

"No—his soul—all there is of him—his great personality—himself. And that's so much more than I can give in return——"

"Nan, darling——"

"Yes——"

"Go to Paris for a year, but don't bind yourself to me. Then, when you come back, if——"

"If I'm still of the same mind——Jerry, you sound like the counsel of a wise and worldly grandmother," with a gleeful laugh.

"—if I'm no worse—if I'm a little better——This is great medicine, Nan. I feel like a new man now. If then——"

"I shall not go at all unless—unless——"

"Yes——"

"—unless I am bound tight—tight—to you. I—I shouldn't feel sure of you!"

"Oh, there's no use resisting you," he said, half under his breath. "It's the sorriest bargain a woman ever made, but——"

"If she will make it——"

"Look at me, Nan."

"I can't—long," she complained. "Somehow you—you—blind me."

He laughed softly. "I realize that—you are blind—blind. But I can't open your eyes. Somehow I'm losing the strength to try."

"I must go now," she said gently, trying to release herself. "Really I must! Yes, I must! Please, Jerry—let me go, dear——Yes, yes—you must!" It took time, however, and was accomplished with extreme difficulty. "But I can go now. I couldn't when I said good-night before——Oh! it's striking twelve! Good-night, Jerry——Merry Christmas, Jerry!"

Before she quite went, however, she came back once more to lean over the back of his chair and whisper in his ear:

"Jerry——"

"Yes?"

"Am I really—engaged—to you?"

"Darling—bless you—I'm afraid you are."

"Afraid?"

"Nan—I'm the happiest cripple on earth."

So she went softly out and closed the door. But it was not to sleep. As for the man she left behind, his eyes looked into the smouldering fire till well toward morning. It was not the doctor's prescription, but it was the beginning of his cure.

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