can't. I'd better talk to you."

"No," I said, "I want to talk to you."

She came and stood by my bedside and looked me in the eyes. "I don't--I
don't want you to talk to me," she said. "I thought you couldn't talk."

"I get few chances--of you."

"You'd better not talk. Don't talk now. Let me chatter instead. You
ought not to talk."

"It isn't much," I said.

"I'd rather you didn't."

"I'm not going to be disfigured," I said. "Only a scar."

"Oh!" she said, as if she had expected something quite different. "Did
you think you'd become a sort of gargoyle?"

"L'Homme qui Rit!--I didn't know. But that's all right. Jolly flowers
those are!"

"Michaelmas daisies," she said. "I'm glad you'r not disfigured, and
those are perennial sunflowers. Do you know no flowers at all? When I
saw you on the ground I certainly thought you were dead. You ought to
have been, by all the rules of the game."

She said some other things, but I was thinking of my next move.

"Are we social equals?" I said abruptly.

She stared at me. "Queer question," she said.

"But are we?"

"H'm. Difficult to say. But why do you ask? Is the daughter of a
courtesy Baron who died--of general disreputableness, I believe--before
his father--? I give it up. Does it matter?"

"No. My mind is confused. I want to know if you will marry me."

She whitened and said nothing. I suddenly felt I must plead with her.
"Damn these bandages!" I said, breaking into ineffectual febrile rage.

She roused herself to her duties as nurse. "What are you doing? Why are
you trying to sit up? Sit down! Don't touch your bandages. I told you
not to talk."

She stood helpless for a moment, then took me firmly by the shoulders
and pushed me back upon the pillow. She gripped the wrist of the hand I
had raised to my face.

"I told you not to talk," she whispered close to my face. "I asked you
not to talk. Why couldn't you do as I asked you?"

"You've been avoiding me for a month," I said.

"I know. You might have known. Put your hand back--down by your side."

I obeyed. She sat on the edge of the bed. A flush had come to her
cheeks, and her eyes were very bright. "I asked you," she repeated, "not
to talk."

My eyes questioned her mutely.

She put her hand on my chest. Her eyes were tormented.

"How can I answer you now?" she said.

"How can I say anything now?"

"What do you mean?" I asked.

She made no answer.

"Do you mean it must be 'No'?"

She nodd