reduced him to helplessness and adoration. And she was delicate! "I know,"
he sympathized with her loyally, "it's like trying to work and be jolly
with a jumping tooth; or rather, in your case, with a constant buzzing in
your head."

The jumping tooth was his own simile. The headaches that had begun while he
was soldiering were increasing. He had intermittent periods of numbness in
the lower half of his body. It was annoying to a busy man. He could offer
no explanation, nor could the doctors. "Overwork," they suggested, and
advised the cure that is of no school--"rest." That was "impossible."
Besides, it was all nonsense. He put it aside, went on, kept it from
Bessie.

The end came, as it always does, even after the longest expectation, with a
rush. He was suffering with one of his acute headaches one night, when
Bessie fell asleep beside him. She woke suddenly, with no judgment of time,
with a start of terror, a sense of oppression, or--death?

"Guy!" she screamed.

The strangeness of his answering voice only repeated the stab of fear. She
was on her feet, had made a light....

He was not suffering any more. He was perfectly conscious and rational. But
from the waist down he could not move nor feel.

The doctors came and talked a great deal and said little; they reminded
them that not much was known of this sort of thing; they would be glad to
do what they could....