“Who’s Von Gerhard?” I inquired, out of the depths of my ignorance. “Anyway, I won’t have him. I’ll bet he wears a Vandyke and spectacles.”
“Von Gerhard!” exclaimed Norah, indignantly. “You ought to be thankful to have him look at you, even if he wears goggles and a flowing beard. Why, even that red-haired New York doctor of yours cringed and looked impressed when I told him that Von Gerhard was a friend of my husband’s, and that they had been comrades at Heidelberg. I must have mentioned him dozens of times in my letters.”
“Never.”
“Queer,” commented Max, “he runs up here every now and then to spend a quiet Sunday with Norah and me and the Spalpeens. Says it rests him. The kids swarm all over him, and tear him limb from limb. It doesn’t look restful, but he says it’s great. I think he came here from Berlin just after you left for New York, Dawn. Milwaukee fits him as if it had been made for him.”
“But you’re not going to drag this wonderful being up here just for me!” I protested, aghast.
Max pointed an accusing finger at me from the doorway. “Aren’t you what the bromides call a bundle of nerves? And isn’t Von Gerhard’s specialty untying just those knots? I’ll write to him to-night.”
And he did. And Von Gerhard came. The Spalpeens watched for him, their noses flattened against the window-pane, for it was raining. As he came up the path they burst out of the door to meet him. From my bedroom window I saw him come prancing up the walk like a boy, with the two children clinging to his coat-tails, all three quite unmindful of the rain, and yelling like Comanches.
Ten minutes later he had donned his professional dignity, entered my room, and beheld me in all my limp and pea-green beauty. I noted approvingly that he had to stoop a bit as he entered the low doorway, and that the Vandyke of my prophecy was missing.
He took my hand in his own steady, reassuring clasp. Then he began to talk. Half an hour sped away while we discussed New York—books—music—theatres—everything and anything but Dawn O’Hara. I learned later that as we chatted he was getting his story, bit by bit, from every twitch of the eyelids, from every gesture of the hands that had grown too thin to wear the hateful ring; from every motion of the lips; from the color of my nails; from each convulsive muscle; from every shadow, and wrinkle and curve and line of my face.
Suddenly he asked: “Are you making the proper effort to get well? You try to conquer those jumping nerfs, yes?”