"Strong, eh?" P. C. Breagh said vacantly, being still absorbed in the effort to remember where he was. He was certainly sitting up on a shiny, cold and slippery floor, leaning back against something warm and fragrant and soft, but he had not the least notion as to the nature of the support afforded him, nor did he associate the ownership of the voice with any person previously met.
"Strong!..." he repeated, and yawned, and could not leave off yawning. "Physical exhaustion, fatigue, and lack of food," he mentally diagnosed, and found that, when his eyes had left off blinking and watering, the room was coming back. There were the Popes, Cardinals, and views of Roman Basilicas; there the oil-paintings of sacred subjects—there the dingy gilt mirrors, the round center-table with books upon it, the oval one with an inkstand and nothing more,—the formal rows of chairs, instantly reviving the impression of a Convent parlor ... and stimulating him to rise, after some slips and sprawls and flounders, and stand upright on the beeswaxed boards, smiling rather stupidly and clutching something small and soft and sentient, for it fluttered in his big inclosing palm as a captive titmouse or robin might have done.... Donnerwetter! it was the hand whose aid he had asked a moment before in his extremity.... A child's.... No!—a girl's.... Who was the girl? ...
The truth burst on him then that it was to the mechanical doll, the stiff, pale, proud, absurd little creature, the Infanta of the drooping eyelids, the Moorish pigmy, he owed the help the little hand had given. The silvery, sweet voice was hers, and against her he had leaned as he sat on the floor gathering in his scattered faculties.... The light touch that had visited his aching forehead, when she had said it did not bleed, had soothed him like the contact of a flower. The sweetness of the voice was in his ears again....
"Will you not sit down? You are not strong, and should manage your forces. A gentleman to faint like that I have never before seen! Your sister will be grieved that you——"
"You are not to tell her!" He dropped heavily into the chair she had brought, and made a feebly-emphatic blow at the table near which she had set it. "Promise me! ... I—I must ask you to be good enough.... Who has gone and unbuttoned my coat?"
X
The pitiable secret the shaggy garment had concealed, the absence of jacket and waistcoat, bringing his hidden poverty into horrible relief, the dinginess of the shirt of two days' wear, the deceptive nature of the paper collar purchased at an outlay of twopence, had been revealed by some traitorous hand during his unguarded weakness of a moment back. The color rushed back to his haggard young face in flood, as with shaky fingers he wedded the big horn buttons to their buttonholes, and felt about his neck to find it wet.... Juliette had said to herself that he had angry eyes. They were tigerish as they flamed at her. Then the yellow flame died out of them and they were nothing but gray and miserable. He said brokenly:
"I—beg your pardon! I must seem the last thing out in the way of a brute to you. I had—fainted or something!—I've been through a lot of late! And you meant to—be kind, I'm sure...."
He had thought her a mere child in size, but her personal dignity lent her height and presence. Her great eyes met his full, and they were deeply blue as scillas in May, with great black pupils and velvety-black bands about the irises. She said in an icy little voice: