. It is
a nice question whether lovers begin to love when they are together, or
when they are apart.

Not that I followed any such line of reasoning at the time. I would not
even admit my folly to myself. But during the restless hours of that
first night after the accident, when my back ached with lying on it,
and any other position was torture, I found my thoughts constantly going
back to Alison West. I dropped into a doze, to dream of touching
her fingers again to comfort her, and awoke to find I had patted a
teaspoonful of medicine out of Mrs. Klopton's indignant hand. What was
it McKnight had said about making an egregious ass of myself?

And that brought me back to Richey, and I fancy I groaned. There is no
use expatiating on the friendship between two men who have gone together
through college, have quarreled and made it up, fussed together over
politics and debated creeds for years: men don't need to be told, and
women can not understand. Nevertheless, I groaned. If it had been any
one but Rich!

Some things were mine, however, and I would hold them: the halcyon
breakfast, the queer hat, the pebble in her small shoe, the gold bag
with the broken chain--the bag! Why, it was in my pocket at that moment.

I got up painfully and found my coat. Yes, there was the purse, bulging
with an opulent suggestion of wealth inside. I went back to bed again,
somewhat dizzy, between effort and the touch of the trinket, so lately
hers. I held it up by its broken chain and gloated over it. By careful
attention to orders, I ought to be out in a day or so. Then--I could
return it to her. I really ought to do that: it was valuable, and I
wouldn't care to trust it to the mail. I could run down to Richmond, and
see her once--there was no disloyalty to Rich in that.

I had no intention of opening the little bag. I put it under my
pillow--which was my reason for refusing to have the linen slips
changed, to Mrs. Klopton's dismay. And sometimes during the morning,
while I lay under a virgin field of white, ornamented with strange
flowers, my cigarettes hidden beyond discovery, and Science and Health
on a table by my elbow, as if by the merest accident, I slid my hand
under my pillow and touched it reverently.

McKnight came in about eleven. I heard his car at the curb, followed
almost immediately by his slam at the front door, and his usual clamor
on the stairs. He had a bottle under his arm, rightly surmising that
I had been forbidd