“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?” Instantly she felt like biting her tongue. He would know nothing of the sad American habit of trying to be funny to keep a wobbly situation on its legs. He would interpret it as heartlessness. “I didn't mean that!” With the Irish impulsiveness which generally weighs acts in retrospection, she reached over and gripped his hand. “I say, you two!” Hawksley closed his eyes for a second. “Wanting to buck up a chap because you re that sort! All right. I'll stick it out! You two! And I might be the worst scoundrel unhung!” He drew her hand toward his lips, and Kitty had not the power to resist him. She felt strangely theatrical, a character in a play; for American men, except in playful burlesque, never kissed their women's hands. The moment he released the hand the old wave of hysteria rolled over her. She must fly. The desire to weep, little fool that she was! was breaking through her defences. Loneliness. The two of them all alone but for Cutty. She rose, crushing the wallet in her hand.