"Not a wink in the night. I've slept a little since daylight."
"Were you—you were in pain, Kenyon!"
"Don't speak of it," said Kenyon, grimly. "It was so bad that I didn't care what happened to me; and I don't care now, when I remember it. I'm thankful the doctors are coming this morning—I mean the umpires. Anything's better than last night over again. I've felt nothing like it before."
"And you never will again, old fellow! I know you won't. They'll see to that!"
"Will they?" Kenyon made a wistful pause. "So I thought up to last night: I thought they'd get me up and out again. In the night I gave up thinking so. I lay here, C. J., and asked only to be put out of my misery. I never had such a bad night before—nothing like. I've had my bad ones, but I used to grin and bear it, and think away of St. Crispin's, and you, and the fellows. But last night——"
"Well?" said C. J. in a hard voice. His heart had smitten him.
"Well, you'd made me give up the idea of St. Crispin's, you know. Don't look like that—it's just as well you did. Only I hadn't it to think about in the night. I missed it."
He shut his eyes: he had been thinking of St. Crispin's, but not in the old way, no longer as within his reach. Ideals are not shattered so easily by hearsay, and St. Crispin's was heaven to Kenyon still, though now he might not enter in. Well, one would rather never get there than find heaven imperfect too. And Kenyon, had he been older, would have appreciated his blessedness in being permitted to lay down this ideal unsubstantiated and as good as new; for not C. J., but experience only, could have razed so solid a castle in the air; C. J. had only lifted the drawbridge against Kenyon forever.
But Forrester was thinking of the night before.