第55章 CHAPTER XIX(3)

His quick smile was so engaging that Kitty answered it - kindred spirits, subconsciously recognizing each other. Fire; but neither of them knew that; or that two lonely human beings of opposite sex, in touch, constitute a first-rate combustible.

Quietly the nurse withdrew. There would be a tonic in this meeting for the patient. Her own presence might neutralize the effect. She had not spent all those dreadful months in base hospitals without acquiring a keen insight into the needs of sick men. No harm in letting him have this pretty, self-reliant girl alone to himself for a quarter of an hour. She would then return with some broth.

"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.

"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 tightening in her throat - "Who could be friendless, with all that money?"