d have been welcome in exchange. So Rosalind thinks as she
opens the window a moment and looks out. She can quite see the houses
opposite. The fog has cleared till the morning.

Perhaps it is the relenting of the atmospheric conditions, or perhaps
it is the oxygen that the patient has been inhaling off and on, that
has slightly revived him. Or perhaps it is the champagne that comes up
through a tap in the cork, and reminds Rosalind's ill-slept brain of
something heard very lately--what on earth exactly was it? Oh, she
knows! Of course, the thing in the street the sanitary engineer's
son drew the pails of water at for the house with the balcony. It is
pleasanter to know; might have fidgeted her if she had not found out.
But she is badly in want of sleep, that's the truth!

"I thought Major Roper was gone, Rosey." He can talk through his heavy
breathing. It must be the purer air.

"So he is, dear. He went two hours ago." She sits by him, taking his
hand as before. The nurse is, by arrangement, to take her spell of
sleep now.

"I suppose it's my head. I thought he was here just now--just this
minute."

"No, dear; you've mixed him up with Gerry, when he came in to say
good-night. Major Roper went away first. It wasn't seven o'clock." But
there is something excited and puzzled in the patient's voice as he
answers--something that makes her feel creepy.

"Are you _sure_? I mean, when he came back into the room with his
coat on."

"You are dreaming, dear! He never came back. He went straight away."

"Dreaming! Not a bit of it. You weren't here." He is so positive that
Rosalind thinks best to humour him.

"I suppose I was speaking to Mrs. Kindred. What did he come back to
say, dear?"

"Oh, nothing! At least, I had told him not to chatter to Sallykin about
the old story, and he came back, I suppose, to say he wouldn't." He
seemed to think the incident, as an incident, closed; but presently
goes on talking about things that arise from it.

"Old Jack's the only one of them all that knew anything about it--that
Sallykin is likely to come across. Pellew knew, of course; but he's not
an old chatterbox like Roper."

Ought not Rosalind to tell the news that has just reached her? She asks
herself the question, and answers it: "Not till he rallies, certainly.
If he does not rally, why then----!" Why then he either will know or
won't want to.

She has far less desire to tell him this than she has to talk of
the identity o