"And the next time you came," said she, "you made a fire for me. Don't you remember?" He remembered. He felt again that glow of self-congratulation which warmed him whenever he considered the comfort of her present state; or came into her room and found her accumulating, piece by piece, her innocent luxuries. Nobody but he had helped her. It was disagreeable to him to think that another man should have had a hand in it. Yet there would be others. He had already revealed her to two or three. "I wonder how you knew," she said. "How I knew what?" "That I was worth while." He gave an inward start. She had made him suddenly aware that in those days he had not known it. He had had no idea what was in her. She had had nothing then "to show" him. It was as if she were asking him, as if he were asking himself, what it was that had drawn him to her, when, in the beginning, it wasn't and couldn't have been the gift? Why had he followed her up when he might so easily have dropped her? He had found her, in the beginning, only because his old friend, Mrs. Dysart, had written to him (from a distance that left her personally irresponsible), and had asked him to look for her, to discover what had become of her, to see if there was anything that he could do. Mrs. Dysart had intimated that she hardly thought anything could be done; that there wasn't, you know, very much in her--very much, that is to say, that would interest Wilton Caldecott. They had been simply pitiful, the girl's poor first efforts, the things that, when he had screwed his courage to the point of asking for them, were all she had to show him. "I was too bad for words, you know," said she, tracking his thought. "You were. You were." "There wasn't a gleam, a spark----" "Not one." They laughed. The reminiscence of her "badness" seemed to inspire them both with a secret exultation. They drew together, uncovering, displaying to each other the cherished charm of it. Neither could say why the thought of it was so pleasing. "And look at you now," said Caldecott. "Yes," she cried, "look at me now. What was it, do you think, that made the difference?" That he had never really known. "Oh, well, I suppose you're stronger, you know; and things are different." "Things?" she repeated. Her lips parted and closed, as if she had been about to say something, and recalled it with a sharp indrawing of her breath. "And so," she said presently, "you think that was it?" "It may have been. Anyhow, you mustn't go getting ill." "I don't think," she said, "there's any need. But don't be frightened. It won't go away." "What won't?" "The gift." They laughed again. It was their own name for it. "I wasn't thinking of it. I was thinking of you." "It's the same thing," said she. "No. It won't go. It can't go. I've got it fast." He rose. He looked down on her; he seemed to hesitate, to consider.