There was some one on the stairs again—some one all in white. Dave Henderson stared. The figure was beckoning to him. Yes, of course, it was the nurse.
“Dave,” Millman repeated, “what are you going to do?”
Dave Henderson laughed again—queerly.
“I'm going upstairs—to see Teresa,” he said.
“And then?” Millman asked.
But Dave Henderson scarcely heard him. He was walking now towards the stairs. The nurse's voice reached him.
“Just a few minutes,” warned the nurse. “And she must not be excited.”
He gained the landing, and looked back over the balustrade down into the great hall below. Millman had come to the foot of the staircase, and was leaning on the newel-post. And Dave Henderson looked, more closely. Millman's gray eyes were blurred, and, though they smiled, the smile came through a mist that had gathered in them. And then Millman's voice came softly.
“I get you, as we used to say 'out there,'” said Millman. “I get you, Dave. Thank God! It's two straight crooks—isn't it, Dave—two of us?”
Millman's face was blotted out—there was another face that Dave Henderson saw now through an open doorway, a face that lay upon the pillows, and that was very white. It must be the great, truant masses of black hair, which crowned the face, that made it look as white as that. And they said she was getting better! They must have lied to him—the face was so white.