‘And then it was as if I could see the car below--see right through into it, and I could see you and me, sort of little and broken inside, and I could feel _our_ pain, but we were really together outside and above, and we knew it would be all right--’ Now he could actually help carry out her picture. ‘I remember in the hospital,’ he said quickly, ‘when they gave me an anæsthetic, I could look down at myself like that. I wouldn’t tell anybody--if I were you.’ ‘Oh, I wouldn’t for worlds! They’d call it being out of the head!’ So she had kept all this, until he came. Just now he turned to her, and there wasn’t a sound from the halls. The light was easy and flowing in the room. Everything was like a slow movement. His right foot raised to take the step toward her, but suddenly he knew if he took the step, it would be next to impossible to remember clearly that he must find Bart Leadley; quite plain, it was, that if he took this step toward her, he wouldn’t be able to go down into Mexico alone and keep his mind to the allegiance he had entered with Bart’s father. His foot settled back to the floor. ‘... And the later part--all different--I’ll never forget!’ she was telling him. ‘It was when the dawn came--the time we were in the awful cold--and they found us, and you were hanging forward on the wheel--your face was like stone--eyes open, but no life. Oh, I’ll never forget! It was as if the skin of your face were pulled back over the bones from behind ... and they lifted me out to an ambulance, before they lifted you, and I saw your left side--all wet and stained dark ... and then I knew I wasn’t helping--so frightened from your look--and I knew I must not fall into fears, nor pay any attention to your wound, but help more--from higher up, and never stop--’ It was getting harder and harder to think of the work ahead. Elbert plunged into the inevitability of it right now. ‘I’ve got a work to do,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to go away. I’m glad I came to-day. About all this--I won’t forget any of it. I’ll know more about it--when I come back--’ The most astonishing thing of all, she seemed to understand even that--no resistance whatever from her, as there had been none from his father. Was it always like this--when one was sure of himself? ‘I have work to do, too,’ she told him at the window. ‘We’ll know all about everything, when the time comes.’ XVI THOROUGHBREDS ENTER ‘Cuando sali de la Habana, Valgame Dios--’