"I wonder if you could get me something to drink?" he said. The girl rose and he watched her intently as she came towards him with a glass. When she entered the moonlight his heart gave a sudden throb. "Clare, Miss Kenwardine!" he said, and awkwardly raised himself on his arm. "Yes," she said, "I am Clare Kenwardine. But drink this; then I'll put the pillows straight and you must keep still." Dick drained the glass and lay down again, for he was weaker than he thought. "Thanks! Don't go back into the dark. You have been here all the time? I mean, since I came." "As you were seldom quite conscious until this morning, how did you know?" "I didn't know, in a way, and yet I did. There was somebody about who made me think of England, and then, you see, I heard you sing." "Still," she said, smiling, "I don't quite understand." "Don't you?" said Dick, who felt he must make things plain. "Well, you stole in and out and sat here sometimes when Lucille was tired. I didn't exactly notice you--perhaps I was too ill--but I felt you were there, and that was comforting." "And yet you are surprised to see me now!" "I can't have explained it properly. I didn't know you were Miss Kenwardine; but I felt I knew you and kept trying to remember, but I was feverish and my mind wouldn't take your image in. For all that, something told me it was really there already, and I'd be able to recognize it if I waited. It was like a photograph that wasn't developed." "You're feverish now," Clare answered quietly. "I mustn't let you talk so much." "You're as bad as Jake; he wouldn't answer my questions," Dick grumbled. "Then, you see, I want to talk." Clare laughed, as if she found it a relief to do so. "That doesn't matter if it will do you harm." "I'll be very quiet," Dick pleaded. "I'll only speak a word or two now and then. But don't go away!" Clare sat down, and after a few minutes Dick resumed: "You passed my door to-day, and it's curious that I knew your step, though, if you can understand, without actually recognizing it. It was as if I was dreaming something that was real. The worst of being ill is that your brain gets working independently, bringing things up on its own account, without your telling it. Anyhow, I remembered the iron steps with the glow of the window through the curtain, and how you slipped--you wore little white shoes, and the moonlight shone through the branches on your dress." He broke off and frowned, for a vague, unpleasant memory obtruded itself. Something that had had disastrous consequences had happened in the quiet garden, but he could not remember what it was. "Why did Lucille call you _ma mignonne_?" he asked. "Doesn't it mean a petted child?" "Not always. She was my nurse when I was young." "Then you have lived here before?" "Not here, but in a country where there are people like Lucille, though it's long ago. But you mustn't speak another word. Go to sleep at once!"