“Answer me. Are you all right again?”
“You answer ME. Did you get my note?”
“Yes. . . . Don't try to get up. You're not strong enough yet. You must wait here while I go and get you some—”
“Don't go!” He almost shouted it. “If—if you do I'll—I'll—I think I'm going to faint again.”
“Oh, no, you're not. And I must go and get you some brandy or something. Stay just where you are.”
“Ruth Graham, if you go away now, I'll go with you, if I have to crawl. Maybe I can't walk, but I swear I'll crawl after you on my hands and knees unless you answer my question. DO you care enough for me to wait?”
She looked out at the little bay, at the narrow, wicked tide race, at the breakers beyond. Then she looked down again at him.
“Yes,” she said. . . . “OH, are you going to faint again? Don't! Please don't!”
Russell Agnew Brooks, the late “John Brown,” opened his eyes. “I am not going to faint,” he observed. “I was merely trying to realize that I was fully conscious.”
Some time after this—hours and minutes do not count in paradise—he remembered the item in the paper.