anted that to pay you. I'll wager you've never
looked into it."

"I had no right to."

"See!" He opened the wallet and spread the contents on the counterpane.
"I wasn't so stony as you thought. What? Cash and unregistered bonds.
They would have been yours absolutely."

"But I don't--I can't quite," Kitty stammered--"but I couldn't have kept
them!"

"Positively yes. You would have shown them to that ripping guardian of
yours, and he would have made you see."

"Indeed, yes! He would have been scared to death. You poor man, can't
you see? Circumstantial evidence that I had killed you!"

"Good Lord! And you're right, too! So it goes. You can't do anything you
want to do. The good Samaritan is never requited; and I wanted to break
the rule. Lord, what a bally mix-up I'd have tumbled you in! I forgot
that you were you, that you would have gone straight to the authorities.
Of course I knew if I pulled through and you found the wallet you would
bring it to me."

Kitty no longer had a foot on earth. She floated. Her brain floated,
too, because she could not make it think coherently for her. A
fortune--for a dish of bacon and eggs! The magnificence, the utter
prodigality of such generosity! For a dish of bacon and eggs and a
bottle of milk! Had she left home? Hadn't she fallen asleep, the victim
of another nightmare? A corner of the atmosphere cleared a little.
A desire took form; she wanted the nurse to come back and stabilize
things. In a wavering blur she saw the odd young man restore the money
and bonds and other documents to the wallet.

"I want you to give this to your guardian when he comes in. I want him
to understand. I say, you know, I'm going to love that old thoroughbred!
He's fine. Fancy his carrying me on his shoulders and eventually
bringing me up here among the clouds! Americans.... Are you all like
that? And you!"

Kitty's brain began to make preparations to alight, as it were. Cutty.
That gave her a touch of earth. She heard herself say faintly: "And what
about me?"

"You were brave and kind. To help an unknown, friendless beggar like
that, when you should have turned him over to the police! Makes me feel
a bit stuffy. They left me for dead. I wonder--"

"What?"

"If--it wouldn't have been just as well!"

"You mustn't talk like that! You just mustn't! You're with friends,
real friends, who want to help you all they can." And then with a little
flash of forced humour, because of the recurrent ti