“God help me, Manners, I would have let you freeze.”

Manners pulled at his pipe.

“Manners,” said Aladdin, “it’s true I know it’s true, because, for all I knew, I was dying when I said it.”

Manners shook his head.

“Oh, no,” said Manners.

“Make me think that,” said Aladdin, with a quaver.  “Please make me think that if you can, for, God help me, I think I would have let you freeze.”

“When I found you,” said Manners, “I—­I was sorry that the Lord hadn’t sent somebody else to you, and me to somebody else.  That was because you always hated me with no very good reason, and a man hates to be hated, and so, to be quite honest, I hated you back.”

“Right,” said Aladdin, “right.”

Light began to come in through the windows, whose broken panes Manners had stopped with crumpled wall-paper.

“But when I got you here,” said Manners, “and began to work over you, you stopped being Aladdin O’Brien, and were just a man in trouble.”

“Yes,” said Aladdin, “it must be like that.  It’s got to be like that.”

“At first,” said Manners, “I worked because it seemed the proper thing to do, and then I got interested, and then it became terrible to think that you might die.”

“Yes,” said Aladdin.  His face was ghastly in the pre-sunrise light.

“You wouldn’t get warm for hours,” said Manners, “and I got so tired that I couldn’t rub any more, and so I stripped and got into the blankets with you, and tried to keep you as warm as I could that way.”

He paused to relight his pipe.

Aladdin stared up at the tattered ceiling with wide, wondering eyes.

“When you got warm,” said Manners, “I gave you all the rest of the whisky, and I’m sorry it made you sick, and now you’re as fit as a fiddle.”

“Fit-as-a-fiddle,” said Aladdin, slowly, as the wonder grew.  And then he began to cry like a little child.  Manners waited till he had done, and then wiped his face for him.

“So you see,” said Manners, simply, though with difficulty, —­for he was a man shy, to terror, of discussing his own feelings,—­“I can’t help liking you now, and—­and I hope you won’t feel so hard toward me any more.”

“I feel hard toward you!” said Aladdin.  “Oh, Manners!” he cried.  “I thought all along that you were just a man that knew about horses and dogs, but I see, I see; and I’m not going to worship anybody any more except you and God, I’m not!”

Then he had another great long, hot cry.  Manners waited patiently till it was over.

“Manners,” said Aladdin, in a choky, hoarse voice, “I think you’re different from what you used to be.  You look as if—­as if you ’d got the love of mankind in you.”

Manners did not answer.  He appeared to be thinking of something wonderful.

“Do you think that’s it?” cried Aladdin.

Manners did not answer.