"Nothing was clear," said Brian, touching his forehead, "but the pansy and you. And purple—like that." He pointed to her ring. "What an odd ring it is, Joan! Wistaria?"
Joan nodded, her color bright.
"Wistaria on a ladder. It's the ring Kenny gave me."
Brian's startled eyes met and held her own. "Why?" he asked.
"I'm going to marry him. Didn't you know?"
"No," said Brian. "I—I didn't know."
CHAPTER XXXVI
APRIL
April with its tender flame of green brought lagging days of worry. Brian, said Kenny wistfully, was just—not Brian. He was an irritable convalescent in a plaster cast, too nervous to be patient. His pain had been intense, the shock disastrous to his self-control. The haggard mark of it upon his face Don read with scalding heart and brooded. When after a refractory week of undisciplined nerves and temper that strained the doctor's endurance to the breaking point, Brian went out of his head for forty-eight hours and babbled like a madman about a face in the mist, Kenny in terror wired for Frank Barrington. Brian, he thought, must be frantic with pain.