Like fair Elaine, James Herbert McArdle in a silken gown lay white and motionless, embowered among blooms; but his eyes glimmered in surprised appreciation when they beheld his serious visitor. Gray was becoming to the fair and slim Lily—her clothes didn’t depend upon her allowance—and she was never more charming than when she was serious.
“My goodness!” said the frank convalescent, with a feeble kind of forcefulness. “I didn’t expect anybody like you! I was sure it would turn out to be some old hag.”
Lily was a little given to the theatrical, though only when occasion warranted it, as this one did if any occasion could. She swept forward softly, her sensitive face all compassion and remorse. She knelt beside the iron bed.
“Some day you may forgive me,” she said, tremulously, and her voice was always stirringly lovely when it trembled. “Some day you may be able even to forget what I’ve done to you—but I want you to be sure that I shall never forget it or forgive myself.”
“Here!” he said. “There’s nothing to that. They tell me you came in the ambulance with me and hung around and did all sorts of things. And look at all these greenhouses you must have bought out! A person’s liable to get a clip on the head almost anywhere these days. Let’s shake hands—but not forget it.”
“You can’t——”
“I haven’t got anything to forgive you for, of course,” he said. “You don’t forgive accidents; you just forget ’em. What I mean is, I don’t want to forget this one—now I’ve seen you, I don’t.”
“Well——” Lily said, vaguely. “But I’d like you just to say you forgive me. Won’t you?”
“All right.” He moved his hand toward her and she took it for a moment. “I forgive you—but I think you ought to do something for me.”
“What?”