said: "Perhaps I am an ungrateful dog."

"That's better. Remember, if there's anything you'd like to get off
your chest, doctors and priests are in the same boat."

With no little effort--for the right words had a way of tumbling
back out of reach--he marshalled his phrases, and as he uttered
them, closed his eyes to lessen the possibility of a break. "I'm
only a benighted fool; and having said that, I have said
everything. I'm one of those unfortunate duffers who have too much
imagination--the kind who build their own chimeras and then run
away from them. How long shall I be kept in this bed?"

"That's particularly up to you. Ten days should see you on your
feet. But if you don't want to get up, maybe three times ten days."

There had never been, from that fatal hour eight months gone down
to this, the inclination to confess. He had often read about it,
and once he had incorporated it in a story, that invisible force
which sent men to prison and to the gallows, when a tongue
controlled would have meant liberty indefinite. As for himself,
there had never been a touch of it. It was less will than
education. Even in his fevered hours, so the girl had said, his
tongue had not betrayed him. Perhaps that sealed letter was a form
of confession, and thus relieved him on that score. And yet that
could not be: it was a confession only in the event of his death.
Living, he knew that he would never send that letter.

His conscience, however, was entirely another affair. He could
neither stifle nor deaden that. It was always jabbing him with
white-hot barbs, waking or sleeping. But it never said: "Tell
someone! Tell someone!" Was he something of a moral pervert, then?
Was it what he had lost--the familiar world--rather than what he
had done?

He stared dully at the footrail. For the present the desire to fly
was gone. No doubt that was due to his helplessness. When he was up
and about, the idea of flight would return. But how far could he
fly on a few hundred? True, he might find a job somewhere; but
every footstep from behind...!

"Who is she? Where does she come from?"

"You mean Miss Enschede?"

"Yes. That dress she has on--my mother might have worn it."

He was beginning to notice things, then? The doctor was pleased.
The boy was coming around.

"Miss Enschede was born on an island in the South Seas. She is
setting out for Hartford, Connecticut. The dress was her mother's,
and she was wearing it to save a little