"My Lady-of-Dreams:
"Merry Christmas, and everything you can desire, even to impossible islands in southern seas! The bracelet I send you carries a talisman of good luck to keep you from an ugly world! I'll come for you at twelve, to tell your especial ear all the things that are too fragile to put on crude paper, and if the snow holds, as seems probable, we'll get a sleigh and go jingling off into the new world, and I'll promise solemnly to believe everything you wish me to believe, never once to say acting, to be entirely docile and joyfully credulous, for a whole twenty-four hours.
"His Honor."
She glanced guiltily at the clock, amazed how completely Massingale had gone out of her thoughts. It was almost noon. She arose hastily to telephone. But at this moment the man in the bed moved and opened his eyes, which remained profoundly set on her halted figure, so luminous and young in the glowing golden Russian blouse in which she had first appeared to him. She paused, poised lightly on her toes, as he stared out at her incredulously, striving to collect his thoughts.
"Dodo?" he said in a whisper, frowning before him.
She came to his bedside, all else forgot, smiling, radiant.
"Here I am!"
Suddenly some confused streak of memory seemed to cross his brain, and immediately he said, weakness in his voice:
"You—you ought not to be here!"
"I am not alone," she said, sitting down; "there is a trained nurse in the other room."
"I remember—last night—your coming suddenly. But—"
"Hush, don't try to remember!" she said quietly. "Rest; sleep all you can!"