s are never born; they are suggested; they are planted seeds.
Ruth did not reply, but stared past the doctor, her eyes misty. The
doctor had sown a seed, carelessly. All that he had sown that
afternoon with such infinite care was as nothing compared to this
seed, cast without forethought. Ruth's mind was fertile soil; for a
long time to come it would be something of a hothouse: green things
would spring up and blossom overnight. Already the seed of a tender
dream was stirring. The hour for which, presumably, she had been
created was drawing nigh. For in life there is but one hour: an
epic or an idyll: all other hours lead up to and down from it.

"By the way," said the doctor, as he sat down in the dining room of
the Victoria and ordered tea, "I've been thinking it over."

"What?"

"We'll put those stories back into the trunk and never speak of
them to him."

"But why not?"

The doctor dallied with his teaspoon. Something about the girl had
suggested an idea. It would have been the right idea, had Ruth been
other than what she was. First-off, he had decided not to tell her
what he had found at the bottom of that manila envelope. Now it
occurred to him that to show her the sealed letter would be a
better way. Impressionable, lonely, a deal beyond his analytical
reach, the girl might let her sympathies go beyond those of the
nurse. She would be enduing this chap with attributes he did not
possess, clothing him in fictional ruffles. To disillusion her,
forthwith.

"I'll tell you why," he said. "At the bottom of that big envelope I
found this one."

He passed it over; and Ruth read:

To be opened in case of my death and the letter inside
forwarded to the address thereon. All my personal effects
to be left in charge of the nearest American Consulate.

CHAPTER XIV

Ruth lost the point entirely. The doctor expected her to seize upon
the subtle inference that there was something furtive, even
criminal, in the manner the patient set this obligation upon
humanity at large, to look after him in the event of his death. The
idea of anything criminal never entered her thoughts. Any man might
have endeavoured to protect himself in this fashion, a man with no
one to care, with an unnameable terror at the thought (as if it
mattered!) of being buried in alien earth, far from the familiar
places he loved.

Close upon this came another thought. She had no place she loved.
In all this world there was no sa