forgotten in the brief doze into which she
succeeded in luring him. When again he stirred and woke she was still
at his side, kneeling upon the hard rock floor beside him. . . . She
had had Patten help her to lift him down from the table before she
despatched Patten with the note for John Engle. Again she pleaded with
him to lie still and just trust to her.

He was very still. She knew that he was trying to piece together his
fragmentary thoughts and impressions, seeking to bridge over from last
night to to-day. So she talked softly with him, soothing him alike
with the tenderness of her voice and the pressure and gentle stroke of
her hand upon his hand and arm. He had had an accident but was going
to be all right from now on. But he must not be moved for a little.
Therefore Engle would come soon, and perhaps Mrs. Engle with him. And
a wagon bringing a real bed and fresh clean sheets and all of those
articles which she had listed. It would not be very long now until
Engle came.

But at last when she paused his hand shut down upon hers and he asked
quietly:

"I didn't dream it all, did I, Virginia? It is hard to know just what
I did and what I dreamed I did. But it seems more than a dream. . . .
Was it I who robbed Kemble of the Quigley mines?"

"Yes," she told him lightly, as though it were a matter of small
moment. "But you were not responsible for what you did."

"And there were other robberies? I even tried to steal from you?"

"Yes," she answered again.

"And you wanted to have me submit to an operation? And I would not?"

"Yes."

"And then . . . then you . . . you did it?"

So she explained, feeling that certainty would be less harmful to him
now than a continual struggle to penetrate the curtain of semidarkness
obscuring his memory.

"I took it upon myself," she told him at the end. "I took the chance
that you might die; that it might be I who had killed you. Perhaps I
had no right to do it. But I have succeeded; I have drawn you back
from kleptomania to your own clear moral strength. You will get well,
Rod Norton; you will be an honest man. But I took it upon myself to
take the chances for you. Now . . . do you think that you can forgive
me?"

He appeared to be pondering the matter. When his reply came it was
couched in the form of a question:

"Would you have done it, Virginia . . . if you didn't love me a little
as I love you?"

And her answer comforted him. He was slee