“I have been ordered by the doctors to keep you very quiet,” she said. “Please do not ask me to break my promise. You will be much better to-morrow—and they will tell you everything.”
“But mine is a strange case, is it not?” I asked.
“Very strange,” she admitted. “We have all been much puzzled concerning you.”
“Then why not tell me all the circumstances now? Why keep me in suspense?” I urged.
“Because you have not yet quite recovered. You are not entirely yourself. Come,” she added kindly, “let us take a little walk. It will do you good for the weather is so lovely to-day.”
At her suggestion I strolled by her side through the pleasant grounds of the hospital, down into St. Malo, the busy streets of which were, however, entirely unfamiliar to me. Yet, according to the Sister, I had walked in them a number of times before. Still, I had no recollection of doing so.
“I am taking you for your favourite stroll,” she said, as we went down one of the steep, tortuous streets to the little Place Châteaubriand in front of the ancient castle, which, she told me, was now a barracks.
Presently she mounted to the ramparts, and as we strolled round them, I admired the beautiful view of the sea, the many islets, and the curious appearance of the town. The tide was up, and the view on that sunny December morning was glorious.
At one point where we halted my nurse pointed out the little summer town of Dinard and St. Enogat, and told me the names of the various islets rising from the sea, Les Herbiers, the Grand Jardin, La Conchée, and all the rest.
But I walked those ramparts like a man in a dream. A new life had, in that past hour, opened up to me. What had occurred since I had accepted that bundle of bank notes from the millionaire’s hand I did not know. I had emerged from the darkness of unconsciousness into the knowledge of things about me, and found myself amid surroundings which I had never before known—in a French hospital where they evidently viewed me as an interesting “case.”