"I thought Major Roper was gone, Rosey." He can talk through his heavy breathing. It must be the purer air.
"So he is, dear. He went two hours ago." She sits by him, taking his hand as before. The nurse is, by arrangement, to take her spell of sleep now.
"I suppose it's my head. I thought he was here just now—just this minute."
"No, dear; you've mixed him up with Gerry, when he came in to say good-night. Major Roper went away first. It wasn't seven o'clock." But there is something excited and puzzled in the patient's voice as he answers—something that makes her feel creepy.
"Are you sure? I mean, when he came back into the room with his coat on."
"You are dreaming, dear! He never came back. He went straight away."
"Dreaming! Not a bit of it. You weren't here." He is so positive that Rosalind thinks best to humour him.
"I suppose I was speaking to Mrs. Kindred. What did he come back to say, dear?"
"Oh, nothing! At least, I had told him not to chatter to Sallykin about the old story, and he came back, I suppose, to say he wouldn't." He seemed to think the incident, as an incident, closed; but presently goes on talking about things that arise from it.