The startled expression passed from his face and left it smiling.
"The last time we met, sir," he said, in the terrible weak whisper that did duty for a voice, "I was once again a self-invited guest in your house."
He held out a bandaged hand in the direction from which my voice was coming, and my uncle clasped it tenderly.
"It's the most welcome compliment you can pay me, David," he said. "When first we met I asked leave to help you in any way I could. I ask again, though I'm afraid there'll be no change in the answer."
No better appreciated tribute could have been offered, and I saw Raney's white cheeks flush with pleasure.
"You don't think I'm done for, sir?" he demanded, drawing his thin body erect in the bed. "They—they couldn't kill me, you see."
"You're only just beginning. Good night, my boy." He paused as though he had something else to say, then laid a hand on O'Rane's head, and repeated, "Good night, my boy."
At the door I heard myself recalled. Raney waited till my uncle's footsteps had died away and then beckoned me to the bedside.
"I want to clear up one thing, George," he said. "That charge, you know. I can't say what your version may be, but I tell you frankly I went out because I wanted to be finished off." He wriggled down under the sheets and lay with his hands clasped under his head. "I don't feel like that now. There's any amount of kick left in me. The only things.... Look here, George, give me time to get used to it, to put some side on, you know. I've always ridden a pretty high horse, and it's a bit of an effort to get down and walk.... Don't spring any surprises on me, will you? There are some people I feel I can't meet.... Let me down gently: you can prepare people a bit.... George, I'm not going to chuck the House. Fawcett was blind, and he was a Minister.... I'm not going to chuck anything!"
In the morning I wrote half a dozen notes to the people I thought would be most interested to hear of O'Rane's return. The half-dozen did not include Sonia, and I am not in the least concerned to know whether I did right or wrong in omitting her. When we met at the hospital on the following Sunday, she announced her intention of coming back to tea with me. I told her of O'Rane's presence, adding that he was wounded and that the ordering of the flat was no longer in my hands. She inquired the extent of his wounds, and I made a clean breast of the whole story. Sonia whitened to the lips, pressed for further information and formulated a grievance that she had not been told before.