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“You got off easy,” she said. She assumed George knew who she was.

“I’m not dead,” said George. “That’s true.”

She nodded. “That’s smart,” she said. “That’s smarter than I thought you’d be. You could have been dead very easily. I’m surprised you’re not dead.”

“May I ask a question?” said George.

“I’d think you’d be through asking questions,” she said. And George finally recognized her voice.

He lay back and closed his one good eye.

“I brought you a plant and a magazine,” she said.

“Thanks,” he said. He wished she would go away. He had nothing to say to her. She was so wild and unfamiliar that George couldn’t even think about her.

“If you want some other plant or some other magazine,” she said, “say so.”

“Just fine,” said George. A whanging headache was coming on.

“I thought of getting you something to eat,” she said. “But they said you were on the serious list, so I thought maybe you better not eat.”

George opened his eye. This was the first he’d heard of his being on the serious list. “Serious list?” he said.

“They wouldn’t have let me in if I hadn’t said I was your sister,” she said. “I think it’s some kind of mistake. You don’t look serious to me.”

George sighed—or meant to sigh. It came out a groan. And, through the whanging and purple flashes of his headache, he said, “They should have you make up the list.”

“I suppose you blame me for all this,” she said. “I suppose that’s how your mind works.”

“It isn’t working,” said George.

“I’m here just because I feel sorry for you,” she said. “I don’t owe you any apology at all. You asked for this. I hope you learned something,” she said. “Everything there is to learn isn’t printed in books.”

“I know that now,” said George. “Thanks for coming, and thanks for the presents, Miss St. Pierre. I think I’d better take a nap now.” George pretended to go to sleep, but Gloria St. Pierre didn’t go away. George could feel her and smell her very close by.

“I left him,” she said. “You hear me?”

George went on pretending to sleep.

“After I heard what he had done to you, I left him,” she said.

George went on pretending to sleep. After a while Gloria St. Pierre went away.

* * *

And, after a while, George really did go to sleep. Sleeping in an overheated room with his head out of order, George dreamed of Gloria St. Pierre.

When he woke up, the hospital room seemed part of the dream, too. Trying to find out what was real and what was a dream, George examined the objects on his bedside table. Among these things were the plant and the magazine Gloria had brought him.

The cover on the magazine could very well have been a part of the dream George had been having, so he pushed that aside. For utterly sane reading, he chose the tag wired to the stem of the plant. And the tag started out sanely enough. “Clementine Hitchcock Double-Blooming Geranium,” it said.

But after that the tag went crazy. “Warning! This is a fully patented plant!” it said. “Asexual reproduction is strictly forbidden by law!”

George thanked God when the perfect image of reality, a fat policeman, clumped in. He wanted George to tell him about the beating.

George told the lugubrious tale from the beginning, and realized, as he told it, that he didn’t intend to press charges. There was a crude fairness in what had happened. He had, after all, started things off by slugging a known gangster much smaller than himself. Moreover, George’s brains had taken such a scrambling that he remembered almost nothing about the men who had done the actual beating.

The policeman didn’t try to argue George into pressing charges. He was glad to be saved some work. There was one thing about George’s tale that interested him, though. “You say you know this Gloria St. Pierre?” he said.

“I’ve just told you,” said George.

“She’s only two doors down,” said the policeman.

“What?” said George.

“Sure,” said the policeman. “She got beat up, too—in the park right across the street from the hospital.”

“How badly hurt is she?” said