She stretched out her hand for a glass, across the top of which a book rested. He followed the movement with a mute fixity.
“This is your medicine,” she said, taking the book off the glass. “You were to take it at five but I didn’t like to wake you.”
She dipped a spoon into the glass and held it out to him. But the young man felt too ill to bother with medicine and, as the spoon touched his lips, he gave his head a slight jerk and the liquid was spilt on the counterpane. She looked at it for a rueful moment, then said, as if with gathering determination,
“But you must take it. I think perhaps I gave it wrong. I ought to have lifted you up. It’s easier that way,” and before he could answer she slipped her arm under his head and raised it, with the other hand setting the rim of the glass against his lips. He swallowed a mouthful and felt her arm sliding from behind his head. He had a hazy consciousness that a perfume came from her dress, and for the first time he wondered who she was. Wondering thus, his eyes again followed her hand putting back the glass, and watched it, white in the gush of lamplight, carefully replacing the book. Then she turned toward him with the same slight, soft smile.
“Who are you?” he said, keeping his hollowed eyes hard on her.
“I’m Rose Cannon,” she answered. “Rose Cannon from San Francisco.”
“Oh, yes,” with a movement of comprehension, the name striking a chord of memory. “Rose Cannon from San Francisco, daughter of Bill Cannon. Of course I know.”
He was silent again, overwhelmed by indifference and lassitude. She made a step backward from the bedside. Her dress rustled and the same faint perfume he had noticed came delicately to him. He turned his head away from her and said dryly and without interest,
“I thought it was some one else.”
The words seemed to arrest her. She came back and stood close beside him. Looking up he could see her head against the light that ran up from the shaded lamps along the ceiling. She bent down and said, speaking slowly and clearly as though to a child,