"Only to show you I was bucking up. Thank you for doing what you did."
"I had to do it."
"Most women would have run away and left me to my fate."
"Not my kind."
"Rather not! Your kind would risk its neck to help a stray cat. I say, what's that you have in your hand?"
"Good gracious!" Kitty extended the wallet. "It is yours, isn't it?"
"Yes. I wanted you to bring it to me the way you have. If I hadn't come back—out of that—it was to be yours."
"Mine?" dumfounded. "But"
"Why not? Gregor gone, there wasn't a soul in the world. I was hungry, and you gave me food. I wanted that to pay you. I'll wager you've never looked into it."
"I had no right to."
"See!" He opened the wallet and spread the contents on the counterpane. "I wasn't so stony as you thought. What? Cash and unregistered bonds. They would have been yours absolutely."
"But I don't—I can't quite," Kitty stammered—"but I couldn't have kept them!"
"Positively yes. You would have shown them to that ripping guardian of yours, and he would have made you see."
