Mora succeeded in checking the boy's spasms, but was much relieved when Sophy asked to have Cesare Camenis in consultation—there were things about the case that he could not understand. He said so frankly. That such a robust, sunburnt little fellow, past the age for teething, should have convulsions baffled him. Camenis arrived at five o'clock. To him Sophy told the whole truth. He was a quiet, grey man of about sixty, whose own life had been tragic. The comprehension of dominated sorrow was in his face. Sophy felt that she could trust him, and that he should know all if he was to save Bobby for her. She could not have spoken to Mora. He was too young—and he was still encased in the hard shell of happiness. She could not have laid the wound of her life bare to him, as she did to this quiet, sad-eyed man whose only son was a cripple born, and whose wife had left him for a singer.

After hearing her, Camenis released his young confrÈre from further responsibility. He would stay himself that night, he said, at Villa Bianca.

Bobby was very ill for some days. He had fever and was delirious. Sophy never left the nursery. Camenis stayed with her till the crisis was past—being taken to and fro between Stresa and the Villa during the day in the launch.

Chesney avoided being alone with the doctor. He had his meals served at different hours, also in his room, for the most part. When he could not avoid meeting Camenis, he would halt awkwardly for a moment, and say: "Little chap going on well?" or, "Don't let Mrs. Chesney break down, will you?" or some such commonplace. He did not like to feel those shrewd, sad eyes of the Genoese physician on his face. He had slipped into the way of taking morphia pretty regularly, ever since that fatal afternoon. To face the prospect of Bobby's possible death, with clear, undrugged mind, was too much for him. And Sophy would not see him—had sent him a sealed line as soon as she could command herself enough to write, saying that she would not.

"Do not try to see me," she had written. "It is all I ask of you."

It was the fourth day of Bobby's illness. The late September evening was still as warm as August. Chesney lay on his bed in the darkness, his hands under his head, staring out at the onyx wall of the Sasso di Ferro, that rose against a sky pricked with stars. The fronds of a big mimosa tree just outside his window, furled sensitively from the heavy dew, made a delicate pattern against the sombre stolidity of the mountain. Through them, as though winking with sardonic humour, the red eye of the Chaldee lime-kiln glowed intermittently. Chesney was not undressed, though he lay upon his bed. He lay there because he felt dead tired, soul and mind and body, and because he had just taken his evening dose of morphia. He was so tired that he was not even thinking his own thoughts. Emile Verhaeren was thinking for him—Verhaeren, the one poet that he had ever really cared for. The great Belgian's volcanic and almost demoniacally virile imagination had appealed to him from the first, as no other had ever done. His own tempestuous, rebellious, intolerant nature echoed to these trumpets of anguish and defiance and exultation. Spirit writhing in the blast-furnace of untempered and primordial sensuality, the distorted religious instinct easing its throes with supernal blasphemies, a dark Prometheus thrusting with his defiant torch at the eye-sockets of the God from whom he had filched it—these things stirred him to the very depths. And, to-night, it was as if Verhaeren had written for him and him alone. Who but he and Verhaeren had ever felt what these words expressed?—these words that thundered and howled through his mind translating himself to himself, with such appalling fitness:

"Dites suis-je seul avec mon Âme,
Mon Âme hÉlas maison d'ÉbÈne
Ou s'est fendu sans bruit un soir
Le grand miroir de mon espoir."

And again:

"Aurai-j'enfin l'atroce joie
De voir nuit aprÉs nuit comme une proie
La dÉmence attaquer mon cerveau,
Et detraquÉ, malade, sorti de la prison
Et des travaux forcÉs de sa raison
D'appareiller vers un lointain nouveau?"

---

He lay there thinking through the terrible, implacable mind of Verhaeren until midnight. Then a foot on the stair roused him. It was light and swift—a running step—Sophy's. Was the boy worse? Was he dying, perhaps? He leaped to the door, jerked it open. His haggard, drug-ravaged face stared out between the cheap yellow wood of the newel-post and the door. Sophy was coming down the stair opposite. She looked like a somnambule in her long white dressing-gown, with eyes fixed before her. He came out and stood facing her. She looked straight at him, but her face was blank of recognition.

"Sophy!" he muttered—there was anguish in his hoarse voice: "Sophy!"

For all response, she leaned over the banister.

"Dottore! Dottore!" she called.

"Vengo—vengo, signora!" came at once the reply of Camenis. As soon as he answered, she turned and ran fleetly up the stairs again. She had not even glanced towards Chesney. Then Camenis went by, also very quickly. Chesney wanted to ask what it was ... he could not speak. Later, he waylaid the doctor coming back. Yes—the boy was conscious again. He would live. The crisis was past.

Chesney hung so heavily on the door that it swung back a little with him.

"Can I do anything for you, signore?" said Camenis, hesitating. "You look ill yourself."

"No—thanks—the—shock——" Chesney mumbled. He retreated, closing the door. Camenis stood a second looking at the closed door. Then he passed on to his own room.

The next day he said to Sophy:

"Signora, now that the little one is out of danger, I feel that I must speak to you about your husband."

He saw her grow rigid.

"Signora," he pursued very gently, "one forgives much to illness. Your husband is an ill man, signora." He saw her eyes waver, but her nostrils were still set.

"You have been kind enough to trust me with your confidence, signora," Camenis went on in his flat, gentle voice. "And so I feel it my duty to speak quite plainly to you."

"Yes," said Sophy mechanically.

Camenis looked at her with that tender pity, which from the wise eyes of a kindly priest or physician does not hurt. His look reminded Sophy of Father Raphael of the Poor. She braced herself to meet what was coming.

"Then, signora," said Camenis, "I will remind you that your husband came to me two weeks ago, to consult me about a severe attack of sciatica. He asked for a palliative. I told him that I knew of none save opium—morphia ... that I did not give it except in extreme cases. Now, signora, from what you have told me—about the unfortunate habit that your husband has only lately escaped from.... You will pardon my perfect frankness, signora?"

"Yes.... Yes...."

"Then.... You must not be too shocked—too horrified. We, who have not endured it, cannot imagine this terrible temptation of morphia. But to one, only so lately cured ... to whom severe pain comes...."

He hesitated again, and Sophy said in a hard, clear voice:

"Do you mean that my husband is taking morphia again?"

"I fear so, signora," said Camenis very gently.

Sophy sat looking down at her hand which she clenched and unclenched as it lay on her knee.

"Yes—I think it's very likely," she said at last, still in that hard, resonant voice.

Camenis was silent for a time; then he said:

"I think your husband has suffered much for what he did the other day, signora."

Sophy's face flamed. Her eyes glittered.

"Don't speak of it ... don't speak of it...!" she cried, as though suffocating.

Again Camenis waited.

"Forgive me, signora," he then said, "but I must tell you that I think this is a crisis for your husband as well as for your son."

Sophy turned suddenly and hid her face against the back of her chair.

The tired, kind eyes of Camenis looked at the bent head compassionately. After another pause, he said:

"I think—as a physician—if you could go to him—gently—he would confess and try once more to—to be what you would have him be, signora."

Then Sophy broke down and wept like a desperate child.

"I can't! Oh, I can't!" she sobbed. "You don't know.... I can't bear even the memory of his face—his voice! How am I to go to him? I can't! I can't!"

The little doctor's face looked very worn as he sat watching her, while she clung to the big, ugly chair as to a rock of refuge, clutching it with her white hands that had grown thin in this one week of Bobby's illness—staining its gay chintz cover with her tears. Suddenly he rose, and went over to her.

"Bambina ... bambina ..." he said tenderly, "when you have saved him, you will love him. We always love what we have saved."

He just touched her hair softly, once, as a father would have done.

"Coraggio ..." he murmured, in his kind, faded voice. Then he left her.

Chesney was filling his hypodermic syringe that evening, about seven, when there came a low knock at his door. He started, nearly dropping the little instrument.

"Who's there?" he called sharply. In every nerve he felt the need of this dose that he was preparing—so soon does the tyrant morphia assert its sway. He was transfixed to hear Sophy's voice reply:

"It's I, Cecil."

Hurriedly, his hands shaking as with ague, he bundled everything into a drawer, and closed it. Then he went to the door. He stood with it in his hand, staring at her as though just waked.

"May I come in?" she said very low. "I—I want to talk with you."

He was still too overcome to speak. Silently he stepped aside, drawing the door with him. She entered quickly, her head a little bent, her hands clasped nervously in front of her. The weather was still very warm; she had come from the nursery, and wore a long peignoir of white muslin. The soft, straight folds made her seem taller than ever. Her bent head contradicted the haughtiness of her body. It was as if she wanted to command a mood of gentleness by forcing its physical semblance.

"Will you sit here?" asked Chesney. His voice shook.

"Thanks...." she murmured, and took the chair that he pushed forward.

She didn't seem able to say what she had come for. She sat silent so long that he felt forced to speak.

"Is ... is Bobby all right?" he faltered.

The colour streamed across her cheek at these words, as though he had struck her.

"Forgive me," he said humbly. "I.... I really care, you know."

"He is better," she managed to reply. Her lips moved stiffly. Then she lifted her head with a sort of desperation of resolve. Her eyes fixed on his.

"Cecil...." she said, "I've come ... one, last time...." She broke off; then went on: "This one, last time," she repeated, "to see if you ... if we ... if together...." Again words failed her. Looking firmly at him, she ended more quietly: "I've come to beg you to tell me the truth," she said, and her dark eyes rested on him full of doubt and pain.

He could scarcely have grown paler, but his head drooped; he sat looking down at his great hands which he clasped and unclasped nervously.

"Well...." she whispered finally. "Will you?.... It's our last ... last chance."

With difficulty he articulated, "Try me."

"Then ..." she went on, after a slight pause, still whispering, "are you ... taking morphine again?"

There was no pause before his answer.

"Yes," he said, his face still drooped away from her.

She caught one hand to her breast. She could not believe her own ears. Had he said "Yes" at once—simply—outright like that, to such a question? Something fine and brave in her throbbed response to that unequivocal "Yes."

"Cecil...." she said.

All at once he tossed up his hands to his bent face. His great figure, huddled on the little chair, began shaking from head to foot.

"Oh, my God!" he said. "My God! Don't be kind to me ... don't be kind!"

And dreadful sobs began heaving through him.

"Oh ... poor Cecil...!" came from her in a gasp.

And then he fell forward on his knees before her, his face in her lap, his hands grasping the soft folds of her gown. His tumultuous, painful sobbing shook them both—as if torn up by bloody roots came the great sobs.

"Sophy.... God.... Sophy.... I've suffered.... I've suffered.... If he'd died.... Yes ... one shot ... yes ... one...."

And his passion of grief, torrential as his passion of love, flooded her, shook her with its cyclonic abandonment, until she seemed one flesh with him in this unmeasured tragedy of wild remorse.

Through her thin gown she felt his tears soak to her very skin—a hot chrism baptising her once more his in this terrific rite of sorrow.

She bent over him, her hands upon his head, her own tears falling.

"No ... no!" she pleaded. "No ... no, Cecil! Don't ... don't despair like this ... we will begin again.... The truth.... You have told the truth...."

She began to sob herself now.

"And the truth shall make you free ... the truth shall make you free, dear...." she kept sobbing.

Now she had his head against her breast—her cheek pressed down on it. As she held Bobby to comfort him, when he was frightened, so she held the great man. He was afraid now—afraid of himself—like a child. Close she held him to comfort him ... close ... close....

---