"Who are you?" he repeated sternly. And the girl turned and faced him and looked up into his grim, tortured face, half shy, half laughing, all glad.
She spoke softly. "Hope," she said. "You needed me"—she said, "and I came."
With that, with the unreasonable certainty that happens at times in affairs which go beyond reason, he was certain. Yet he did not dare to be certain.
"Who are you?" he threw at her for the third time, and his eyes flamed down into the changing face, the face which he had never known, which he seemed to have known since time began. The laughter left it then and she gazed at him with a look which he had not seen in a woman's eyes before. "I think you know," she said. "Toddy Winthrop isn't the only one. You saved me—Oh, you've saved me too." Every inflection of the voice brought certainty to him; the buoyant, soft voice which he remembered. "I am Hope Stuart," she said. "I am August First."
"Ah!" He caught her hands, but she drew them away. "Not yet," she said, and the promise in the denial thrilled him. "You've got to know—things."
"Don't think, don't dream that I'll let you go, if you still care," he threw at her hotly. And with that the thought of two days before stabbed into him. "Ah!" he cried, and stood before his happiness miserably.
"What?" asked the girl.
"I'm not fit to speak to you. I'm disgraced; I'm a coward; you don't know, but I let—that child be killed as much as if he had not been saved by a miracle. It wasn't my fault he was saved. I didn't mean to save him. I meant to save myself," he went on with savage accusation.
"Tell me," commanded the girl, and he told her.
"It's what I thought," she answered him then. "I told the doctor what Dick said, this morning. The doctor said it was the commonest thing in the world, after a blow on the head, to forget the last minutes before. You'll never remember them. You did save him. Your past—your character decided for you"—here was his own bitter thought turned to heavenly sweetness!—"You did the brave thing whether you would or not. You've got to take my word—all of our words—that you were a hero. Just that. You jumped straight down and threw Toddy into the bushes and then fell, and the chauffeur couldn't turn fast enough and he hit you—and your head was hurt."