'You were quite right.'
'You really think so?'
'I certainly do. A rather similar action, under far less provocation,
once made Jael the wife of Heber the most popular woman in Israel.'
'I wish I could think so too,' she murmured. 'At the moment, you know,
I was conscious of nothing but an awful elation. But--but--oh, he was
such a darling before he got this dreadful affliction. I can't help
thinking of G-George as he used to be.'
She burst into a torrent of sobs.
'Would you care for me to view the remains?' I said.
'Perhaps it would be as well.'
She led me silently into the ravine. George Mackintosh was lying on his
back where he had fallen.
'There!' said Celia.
And, as she spoke, George Mackintosh gave a kind of snorting groan and
sat up. Celia uttered a sharp shriek and sank on her knees before him.
George blinked once or twice and looked about him dazedly.
'Save the women and children!' he cried. 'I can swim.'
'Oh, George!' said Celia.
'Feeling a little better?' I asked.
'A little. How many people were hurt?'
'Hurt?'
'When the express ran into us.' He cast another glance around him.
'Why, how did I get here?'
'You were here all the time,' I said.
'Do you mean after the roof fell in or before?'
Celia was crying quietly down the back of his neck.
'Oh, George!' she said, again.
He groped out feebly for her hand and patted it.
'Brave little woman!' he said. 'Brave little woman! She stuck by me all
through. Tell me--I am strong enough to bear it--what caused the
explosion?'
It seemed to me a case where much unpleasant explanation might be
avoided by the exercise of a little tact.
'Well, some say one thing and some another,' I said. 'Whether it was a
spark from a cigarette----'
Celia interrupted me. The woman in her made her revolt against this
well-intentioned subterfuge.
'I hit you, George!'
'Hit me?' he repeated, curiously. 'What with? The Eiffel Tower?'
'With my niblick.'
'You hit me with your niblick? But why?'
She hesitated. Then she faced him bravely.
'Because you wouldn't stop talking.'
He gaped.
'Me!' he said. 'I wouldn't stop talking! But I hardly talk at
all. I'm noted for it.'
Celia's eyes met mine in agonized inquiry. But I saw what had happened.
The blow, the sudden shock, had operated on George's brain-cells in
