“Please tell me that other matter now—­why you were so good to me, even on the steamer?”

“But I want you to rest.”

“I would rest better——­”

Miss Mallory looked up at him for a moment, and embarrassment came to her face—­different from any look of hers before.

“It was in New York....  I wore a white net waist and a big bunch of English violets,” she said, watching him.  “It seems very long ago, but it isn’t—­hardly ten weeks.  There was darkness and Hedda was telling young Loevborg to drink wine and get vine-leaves in his hair——­”

“And you were the one?” Bedient said.

     “’So fleet the works of men, back to their earth again,
     Ancient and holy things fade like a dream,’”

she repeated.

“I remember.”

“And do you remember the first scream?...  If I were a lost and freezing traveler in Siberia, the first cry of a gathering wolf-pack could not have more terror for me than that scream.  And, I can hear the snapping of the chair-backs still, hideous secrets from human lips, and the scraping, panting, packing.  I was hurt in the first crazy rush.  I crushed the violets to my lips to keep out the smoke and gas....  Then your voice, ’Now’s the time for vine-leaves, fellows,—­there’s a woman for everyone to help!’ I heard you laugh and challenge the men to their best manhood....  And all the time, I thought I was dying....  Then your foot touched me, and I heard you say, ’Why, here’s a little one left for me——­’”

“Your hair had come undone,” he said softly.

“And you never looked under the violets——­”

“I went back to look for you.  I wasn’t gone a minute, but you had vanished.”

“They took me away in the car—­then I thought of the story and I didn’t see you again, until you brushed by me in the Dryden ticket office in New York—­the day before we sailed——­”

“And you’ve been my good angel ever since——­”

“I want to be—­now....  Please get me a glass of warm milk.”

He obeyed.  From her bag she produced a powder and, at her word, Bedient held forth his tongue....

“And now I want you to drink the milk—­all of it.  You put down asterisks in the place of breakfast—­quite as usual.  I considered my self-control remarkable at the time.”

He drank the milk slowly, as she had ordered....  The moments were sensational.  Picture after picture passed through the light of his mind, as from other lives, and the loves of many women; and then the whole story that he had told Beth Truba rushed by—­the mother’s hand and the little boy—­the city, the parks, the ships—­the hours upon her arm, when she had made him over anew to face the long voyage alone—­the questions he had asked—­the last port with her, which he had never been able to find—­the last ride with Beth—­until he was shaken with the rush of visions.  Everything that he was, and hoped to be, everything that he had thought of beauty and truth and giving, every aspiration and every inspiration—­seemed gifts of women!  His very life and all that had come to him—­gifts of women.  And all their loving, wistful, smiling faces were there—­among the Dream Ranges....  Now this one was speaking: