"I'll come," she answered. What she saw in the man's face was that, because she had brought the boy, he actually clung to her. She had been clung to many times before, but never by a man who looked quite like this. There was _more_ than you could see. He led her to a smaller room near by. He made her sit down, but he did not sit himself. It was plain that he did not mean to keep her from her bed--though he was in hard case if ever man was. His very determination not to impose on her caused her to make up her mind to tell him all she could, though it wasn't much. "Captain Muir's mother believes that he is dead," he said. "It is plain that no excitement must approach him--even another person's emotion. He was her idol. She is in London. _Must_ I send for her--or would it be safe to wait?" "There have been minutes to-day when if I'd known he had a mother I should have said she must be sent for," was her answer. "To-night I believe--yes, I _do_--that it would be better to wait and watch. Of course the doctors must really decide." "Thank you. I will speak to them. But I confess I wanted to ask _you_." How he did cling to her! "Thank you," he said again. "I will not keep you." He opened the door and waited for her to pass--as if she had been a marchioness herself, she thought. In spite of his desperate eyes he didn't forget a single thing. He so moved her that she actually turned back. "You don't know anything yet-- Some one you're fond of coming back from the grave must make you half mad to know how it happened," she said. "I don't know much myself, but I'll tell you all I was able to find out. He was light headed when I found him trying to get on the boat. When I spoke to him he just caught my hand and begged me to stay with him. He wanted to get to you. He'd been wandering about, starved and hiding. If he'd been himself he could have got help earlier. But he'd been ill treated and had seen things that made him lose his balance. He couldn't tell a clear story. He was too weak to talk clearly. But I asked questions now and then and listened to every word he said when he rambled because of his fever. Jackson was a fellow prisoner who died of hemorrhage brought on by brutality. Often I couldn't understand him, but he kept bringing in the name of Jackson. One thing puzzled me very much. He said several times 'Jackson taught me to dream of Robin. I should never have seen Robin if I hadn't known Jackson.' Now 'Robin' is a boy's name--but he said 'her' and 'she' two or three times as if it were a girl's." "Robin is his wife," said Coombe. He really found the support of the door he still held open, useful for the moment. An odd new interest sharpened in her eyes.