you please?" I asked politely.

"I have been nursing you, Miss Smith. You have been quite ill, you
know."

I lay there looking at that self-contained, trained young woman,
with feelings of almost ludicrous astonishment. I remembered the
skidding car; and Richard Geddes lying with his head on Alicia's
knees, and how we had both thought him dead; and myself sitting in
the dust; and then the pain. But it was astounding news that I had
been very badly hurt full three weeks ago!

Alicia stole in and, seeing me awake, tried to smile, but cried
instead, with a wet cheek against my hand. A few minutes later
Doctor Geddes himself appeared. It was enough to scandalize any
self-contained nurse to see a six-foot-three doctor behave in the
most abandoned and unbedside manner!

"Sophy!" gulped the doctor, "oh, deuce take you, Sophronisba Two,
what do you mean by scaring honest folks half out of their wits?"

The nurse was destined to receive another shock. Richard of the Lion
Heart dropped down on his knees beside Alicia, and laid his bearded
cheek against my wan one, and for a while couldn't speak. Alicia
tried to get her slender arms around him, and couldn't.

"I think," ventured the nurse, in level tones, "that the patient
had better not be excited. Shall I give her a stimulant, doctor?"

"The patient's on the highroad to getting well," said the doctor.
"And we're the best of all stimulants, aren't we, Sophy?"

When I began to get stronger, the dream which had haunted my illness
came back with astonishing vividness and haunted my waking hours. I
knew it was a dream, for of course I hadn't been in black water, I
hadn't strained toward a light upon the flood, and of course, I
hadn't really heard Nicholas Jelnik calling my name; and the kiss
was part of the fantasy. I watched him stealthily, this cool,
collected, impersonal young man, to whom even the efficient nurse
was astonishingly respectful, and pure laughter seized me at the
idea of _his_ crying aloud, being as agitated, as passionate, as
fiercely insistent, as he had been in the vision.

I ventured to put a part of the vagary to the acid test:

"Alicia, I wasn't thrown out again, into water, was I?"

"No. That was delirium, dear. You were frightfully ill for a while,
Sophy." Her face paled. "So ill that The Author fled, because he
wouldn't stay in the house and see--what we expected to see. He said
it would permanently shatter his nerves. But he has wired every d