"It wasn't exactly a promise. Besides, I don't think you have been
really asleep; and if you have it is not for long enough," she said,
smiling, and "hedging" in truly feminine fashion. "Are you feeling
better--not in so much pain?"
"Oh, yes," he replied. "I'm in no pain." He told the falsehood as
admirably as he managed his face when he was awake, but it gave him away
when he was asleep. "I shall be quite well presently. I wish to Heaven
they would let me be removed to the hospital!"
"That sounds rather ungrateful," said Nell, with mock indignation.
"Don't you think we are taking enough care of you?"
He sighed.
"When I lie here and think of all the trouble I've given, I sometimes
wish that that fellow's knife had found the right place. Though I
suppose they'd have hanged him if it had."
Nell shuddered.
"Is that the only reason you regret he did not kill you?" she said.
"Am I to speak the truth?"
"Nothing else is ever worth speaking," she remarked, in a low voice.
"Well, then, yes. I am not so enamored of life as to cling to it very
keenly," he said, stifling a sigh. "I don't mean because I have had a
rough time of it--the majority of the sons of men find the way paved
with flints--but because----What an ungrateful brute I must seem to you.
Forgive me; I'm still rather weak."
"Rather!"
"Very weak, then; and I talk like a hysterical girl. But, seriously, if
any man were given his choice, I think he'd prefer to cross the river at
once to facing the gray and dreary days that lie before him."
"But the days that lie before you are brilliant; crimson with fame and
fortune, instead of gray and dreary," she said. "Have you forgotten your
success at--at the ball? that you were to play at the duchess'?
Everybody says that you will become famous, that a great future lies
before you, Mr. Falconer."
"Do they?" he said, gazing at the window dreamily. "No, I have not
forgotten. I wonder whether they are right?"
"I know, I feel, they are right," she said quietly. "Very soon we shall
all be bragging of your acquaintance--I, for one, at any rate. I shall
never lose an opportunity of talking of 'my friend, Mr. Falconer, the
great musician, you know.'"