"How--how are you?" asked Kitty, inanely.
"Top-hole, considering. Quite ready to be killed all over again."
"You mustn't talk like that!" she protested.
"Only to show you I was bucking up. Thank you for doing what you did."
"I had to do it."
"Most women would have run away and left me to my fate."
"Not my kind."
"Rather not! Your kind would risk its neck to help a stray cat. I say,
what's that you have in your hand?"
"Good gracious!" Kitty extended the wallet. "It is yours, isn't it?"
"Yes. I wanted you to bring it to me the way you have. If I hadn't come
back--out of that--it was to be yours."
"Mine?"--dumfounded. "But----"
"Why not? Gregor gone, there wasn't a soul in the world. I was hungry,
and you gave me food. I wanted 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.