That evening Anne Harding had what she called "a downright talk" with Lady Wychcote. The two "hit it off" very well, considering all things. There was a certain hardness in the little trained nurse, as in the haughty old aristocrat, which commanded their mutual respect; though Anne's hardness was always kind, and Lady Wychcote's nearly always unkind. Still the two able creatures set a certain value on each other, and this wrought for understanding.

Anne told her ladyship outright that she would give up the case unless Dr. Carfew or Sir Lionel Playfair were put in charge. Dr. Bellamy had told her that he would not assume further responsibility. Sophy had ranged herself firmly on the side of Bellamy and Anne. Gerald was with her in this decision.

Lady Wychcote looked rather grimly at the Lilliputian envoy.

"Very well," she said. "But I will not countenance an enforced removal to one of their asylums."

"Could not your ladyship leave that to Doctor Carfew?"

"No," was her ladyship's reply.

"Perhaps I can bring him to reason," Anne had said to Sophy after this interview. "At any rate, I want him to hear plainly, from a man, what his fate will be if he goes on with his poisons."

Sophy said nothing.

"Poor soul! She's given up!" thought Anne. "Well, I must tussle to the bitter end—that's what nurses are here for."

As soon as Chesney was rational, she "had it out" with him.

"Well, for God's sake, bring on your damned quack and let him have his quack-quackery out!" was his surly response. "I suppose I'm of too tough a fibre to be slain by an ass's jawbone. But I warn you—no sanatorium hocus-pocus!"

"Oh, you needn't worry!" Anne had said crossly. "Your mother's on your side. She'll help you destroy yourself. Mothers have a sort of gift that way, you know. But if you were my man—I'd clap you in a safe place, no matter what you said or did!"

Chesney gave her one of his ugliest looks.

"Leave me in peace!" he growled. "I've said I'd see your precious Carfew. Now you're working me up just because of your own nasty little temper. A fine nurse, you are!"

"Well, I can't beat you for a patient," retorted Anne, with her puggy sniff.

That same night Bobby had a bad attack of croup. Sophy and Bellamy and Anne—who had left Chesney unceremoniously to the strange nurse's care—fought until daybreak for his life.

After it was all over, and Bobby safe, Bellamy told Sophy that the time to keep his promise had come. She gazed at him, startled—not recollecting.

"My promise to tell you frankly when I thought the boy needed a change of climate," he reminded her. "He needs it now, Mrs. Chesney. You both need it."

Sophy whitened.

"You don't mean...?"

"No, no! Nothing in the least serious. But, though we've had some fine days lately, the boy needs a drier climate—hotter sunshine. The Italian Lakes are not at all bad in summer, Mrs. Chesney, though people stare at the idea of going to Italy in the summer. I spent a delightful July and August once at Cadenabbia. Why not try Como? Or, if you want to be perfectly quiet, the other lake—Maggiore. There's a capital hotel at Baveno. I've been there, too. Nice gardens for the boy to play in. Pleasant jaunts to the Barromean Islands—if you care for that sort of thing."

Sophy seemed to be only half listening to him. She had a far-away look in her eyes. He thought that she was brooding over the sad plight in which she would have to leave her husband if she took her boy to Italy. But Sophy was only thinking how strange it was that an English physician was ordering to go to the place where Amaldi had been born. She had thought she might never see him again. Now she might see him very soon. It gave her a frank pleasure to think of seeing Amaldi again. She liked him warmly.

Bellamy was speaking to her with great earnestness:

"Mrs. Chesney, pray don't worry over having to leave your husband. Carfew comes to-morrow, you know, and he will tell you what I tell you now, I feel convinced—that it will be the best thing possible for Chesney to have the brace of feeling that he must do without you, for a time."

Sophy looked at him with her candid eyes.

"I wasn't worrying," she said. "I've thought that out for myself. I know"—she spoke with quiet emphasis—"whether Doctor Carfew says so or not, that it will be best for me to leave Cecil now. Not only for him.... I'm thinking of myself, too, Doctor Bellamy. I've come to the end ... for the present. I haven't anything more to give him." Her voice became suddenly bitter. "Not hope, or patience, or belief ... or ... anything that could really help him," she ended, flushing a little, feeling that she had said too much.

"You are simply worn out, dear lady," he replied gently. "Your own natural feeling has worn you out as much as anything. What Chesney needs now is the cruel kindness of skilled professionals. I hope that we can succeed in getting his consent to go to Carfew's sanatorium."

Sophy looked at him rather inscrutably.

"I shall speak to him about that myself—I made up my mind to do so last night."

Bellamy had never noticed how determined her beautiful mouth could look. He thought how sad it was that character needed to be hammered out on such rough anvils. It was strange to see it being thus shaped under one's eyes, as it were.

From this talk with Bellamy Sophy went straight to Lady Wychcote.

"Doctor Bellamy says that Bobby must have a complete change of climate. I am going to take him to Italy, as soon as I can get packed," she said, without preliminaries.

Lady Wychcote's brow lowered.

"What! You will leave your husband to hirelings?" she asked, in her coldest, most metallic tones.

"'Hirelings' are the best people to leave Cecil with at present. You must see that yourself," Sophy answered, unmoved, and quite as coldly.

"You actually mean it?"

"Yes."

Lady Wychcote's mouth thinned to a hair. The width of this hair-line indicated an ironic smile.

"You have heard the saying, I presume, that a wife should forsake all lesser ties in order to cleave to her husband?"

"I have," replied Sophy. "And that other saying, too: 'Wives, submit yourselves unto your husbands as unto the Lord.' I haven't the least intention of submitting myself to Cecil as 'unto the Lord.' And I don't mean to sacrifice my son to him, either."

Lady Wychcote said nothing at once, only sat and looked at her daughter-in-law. As she saw the hardness to which Sophy's face was congealing under this look, she broke her silence by observing:

"I was trying to realise that you actually propose to leave the man, whom you promised to cherish in sickness and in health—to leave him in the clutch of a hideous illness—merely because your son, his son, has had an attack of croup."

Sophy said quietly:

"Why do you call it an 'illness,' Lady Wychcote?"

Her mother-in-law reddened; but replied doggedly:

"Because it is an illness. He came near dying the other night."

"People who persistently take poison must come near dying sometimes," said Sophy.

Lady Wychcote rose.

"I pity my son!" she exclaimed. "I pity him from the depths of my soul!"

"Yes.... I pity him, too," said Sophy.

"But not for the same reason. I pity him because he has married a heartless woman!"

Sophy shook her head gently. She had not risen. She sat looking up at her irate mother-in-law out of tired grey eyes.

"You don't think that," she said. "You don't like me—and you are very angry with me because I won't play 'patient Griselda' any longer—but you don't think me heartless."

"Upon my word!" exclaimed her ladyship, with a sort of gasp. "Upon my word!" she repeated. Words failed her.

Now Sophy rose too. She looked earnestly into the angry, pinched face. She was sorry for the mother whose ambition had outweighed her love—and was now but a grey ash of disappointment on her burnt-out, irascible heart.

"Lady Wychcote," she said, "I must tell you, whether you believe me or not, I must tell you that even now, after I had seen Bobby safe and well in proper hands, I would come back to Cecil—if it would do him any real good. No—please let me finish. I shan't speak like this again. I would come back—horrible, hideous as it all is—I would stay near him. But I cannot help him. I am sure that it only does him harm to have me—us—always overlooking—forgiving—weakly, miserably forgiving. I do not forgive any longer—I will never forgive again—unless he will submit himself to those who can cure him. I won't risk my life and Bobby's—for his selfishness—his brutal self-indulgence. I wanted you to understand why I go—just how I feel. It is only fair. I am going to Italy with Bobby. Nothing can change me—nothing that you, or any one else, can say. Nothing—nothing!"

Lady Wychcote received this with bitter silence; then she said in a low voice of the most concentrated resentment:

"So you propose to leave the burden of your wifely duty on my shoulders?"

"No!" cried Sophy passionately. "As things are now, I have no wifely duty! The only duty left me is my duty to my son and to myself! I have no husband! And while this vile habit lasts, you have no son! He loves only morphia. Morphia is wife and mother and child and God to him. Oh, Lady Wychcote, do you, too, leave him! Leave him to those who can save him. Forsake him so that, from sheer loneliness, he will be forced to find himself again. It is the only way—the only, only way!"

One cannot speak out of the fulness of the heart with genuine, human passion, and not move something—even if it be only the outmost, thinnest veil of the atmosphere of another spirit. Lady Wychcote was stirred unwillingly by this ardent appeal, but she would not yield her pride.

"Pardon me," she said frigidly, "but your desertion of your post only gives me double reason for remaining at mine."

She turned and went regally away towards her own apartments. But in truth her inward spirit was not nearly as determined as her well-corseted back. That Sophy should actually have resolved to leave her alone with Cecil filled her with dismay. She had not realised, until about to lose it, the admirable "buffer" between her and the full consequences of Cecil's "illness," that Sophy's presence had provided. Lady Wychcote had, to a marked degree, your healthy egoist's detestation of sick-rooms. Not only did the mere word "morphinomaniac" fill her with dread, but it roused in her the born Conservative's resentment against anything in the least outrÉ or eccentric. It was Sophy who had watched, pleaded, interviewed doctors, read aloud, endured abuse, lain awake at night. The body of Sophy's vigorous young health had stood between her and that great, drug-poisoned body of her son.

What if...? Yes, to this point had Lady Wychcote been brought by the realisation of her daughter-in-law's imminent departure. What if, after all, the doctors were right? If, for his own sake, it would be better to have Cecil sent to a sanatorium?