n delirious or absent, to create the occasion and the
talk between them. She dropped all fears, and in frank tenderness
brought him her twenty years of dreams. And in her thought he accepted
and answered them. But when he woke and spoke to her from the bed, she
knew at once that the man who lay there was not the man with whom she
had been speaking. His personality fenced with hers; it had barriers
she could not pass. She dared not try, for dread of his indifference or
his smiles.

"What made you stick on in this place?" he asked her.

"I don't know," said Helen. "Places hold one, don't they?"

"None ever held me. I couldn't have been content to stay the best half
of my life in one spot. But I suppose women are different."

"You speak as though all women were the same."

"Aren't they? I thought they might be. I don't know much about them,"
said Peter, rubbing his chin. "Rough as a porcupine, aren't I? You must
have thought me a savage when you found me stuck upside-down in that
tree like a sloth. What DID you think?"

She looked at him, longing to tell him what she had thought. She longed
to tell him of the boy she had expected to find in the tree. She longed
to tell him how the finding had shocked her by bringing home to her her
loss--not of the boy, but of something in that moment still more
precious to her. Because (she longed to tell him) she had so swiftly
rediscovered the lost boy, not in his face but in his glance, not in
his words but in the tones of his voice.

But when she looked at him and saw him leaning on his elbow waiting for
her answer with his half-shut lids and the half-smile on his lips, she
answered only, "I was thinking how to get you back to the bank."

"Was that it? Well, you managed it. I've never thanked you, have I?"

"Don't!" said Helen with a quick breath, and looked out of the window.

He waited for a few moments and then said, "I'm a bad hand at thanking.
I can't help being a savage, you know. I'm not fit for women's company.
I don't look so rough when I'm trimmed."

"I don't want to be thanked," said Helen controlling her voice; and
added with a faint smile, "No one looks his best when he's ill."

"Wait till I'm well," grinned Peter, "and see if I'm not fit to walk
you out o' Sundays." He lay back on his pillow and whistled a snatch of
tune. Her heart almost stopped beating, because it was the tune he had
whistled at the door twenty years ago. For a moment she thought she
could