Sophy gave Tilda and Miller orders to pack, then she sent and asked to speak with Nurse Harding for a moment. She wished to know whether her husband could see her, if he were in a sufficiently rational state for her to talk with him. Anne replied that he had just had his fraction of morphia, and that it was his best hour in the day.

"Well, Daphne?" he said, rather guiltily, when she entered. She marvelled that he could call her "Daphne." It was like throwing the flowers from a sacred grave into the mire. She sat down near him, and said:

"I've come to tell you that I'm going with Bobby to Italy to-morrow."

He looked blank, not taking it in at first; then he scowled.

"I see. Shuffling off this marital coil with a vengeance, ain't you?"

"I'm going with Bobby because he needs me. But even if he didn't need me, I should go. I will not sit by and see you destroy yourself."

"Yes. I can imagine that to hear of the process from a distance would be more agreeable."

"I've tried with all my might to help you. You've only laughed at me. It amused you to deceive me. I was no help to you. If I did help you in any way, it was to ruin yourself."

"Strong words, my love. So you consider me a ruin?"

"Almost."

Her lips quivered. She closed them firmly. For his own good she was not going to let that haggard face move her unduly.

"Mh. I see. Well, though I do not seem to appeal to your compassion, I trust that I do to your sense of the picturesque. Ruins are supposed to be romantic. However, a human ruin hasn't the same value in the landscape as an architectural one. Human ruins are generally put under ground, not on top of it. I dare say the Cecil Chesney ruin will be thus disposed of. Shall you return for the ceremony, or have you decided to live permanently in Italy?"

Sophy looked at him with a sort of impassioned hardness.

"I will come back when you are cured—when you have gone of your own accord to a place where they can cure you. Until then—I will never come back."

He looked at her, hiding his real shock under a harsh sarcasm.

"'These be news!'" he exclaimed dryly. "Unlike the leopard, you seem to have been changing your spots—the spots on the sun of my happiness—the little freckles on the fair lily of your character."

"I have changed," she said. "You have changed me."

"That's very interesting. Our strongest influence seems really to be our unconscious influence. Fancy my having changed the dear partner of my joys and sorrows to this semblance, and all the while being myself in total ignorance of the change! Well, well! The world wags and we wag with it. So you're determined to put off the old Adam—in other words, Cecil Chesney?"

Sophy looked at him for a moment without answering, then she said simply:

"Why should I want to be with you when you treat me like this? Why should I risk my life for a man who doesn't love me?"

"So I don't love you, eh?"

"No."

"You really think that?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because you put a poisonous drug before me."

He flushed, biting his lip hard. Then he said in a cold, rough voice:

"Look here—am I to take this announcement seriously?"

"Yes."

"You mean you're really going to cut off to Italy and leave me in the lurch—like a sick dog in a ditch?"

"I'm going to Italy to-morrow."

"God! you're a fine helpmate!" he cried savagely. "'Eyes take your fill ... lips take your last embrace.' Come here!" he barked suddenly, tapping the side of the bed with his gaunt hand. "Come to your husband, wifie, dear!"

Sophy stood up. "No," she said.

"What! You refuse me a chaste embrace?—even at parting? You're really a sublime wife, ain't you?"

"I'm not a wife. I am myself. You are not my husband. You are not even yourself. Until you are yourself I will not come near you. I will not pretend to be your wife."

His face was livid—dreadful. He reared himself in the bed. All his huge frame, so noticeably thinner, trembled. He flung out an arm towards the door.

"Damn you! go, then!" he said behind his teeth. "If you're going, go!"

She was gone while he was yet speaking.

Dr. Carfew arrived at Dynehurst the next morning. Sophy was to leave for the Continent that afternoon. He had a long conference with Lady Wychcote, Gerald, Bellamy and Nurse Harding. Sophy was present but said very little. When Lady Wychcote so far put aside her usual attitude of haughty reserve as to urge the great specialist to take charge of her son's case, he met her courteously but bluntly.

"Unless Mr. Chesney is put in one of the places that I provide for such patients, I cannot do so, your ladyship," he said. "It would be quite useless."

Then the question of committing Cecil to such a place, even without his consent, was discussed. Lady Wychcote listened to the arguments for this course with a moderation which she had not hitherto shown. When Carfew had ended, by explaining at some length, for him, the sound reasons for adopting such a measure in the present case, she sat very thoughtful. All looked at her intently. At last she said:

"You really think that his mind may go, unless he is controlled in time?"

"I do."

"And he is dangerous—to others—to himself?"

"Surely your ladyship has had proof of that."

"Do you mean that he might go to the length of—of self-destruction?"

"Neither his own life nor the lives of others can be safe with an uncontrolled madman—whether his madness is temporary or permanent."

Lady Wychcote turned her lips inward. She was very pale. She had on no rouge whatever to-day. At last she said in a thin voice:

"My own wishes can hardly stand against such a statement from such an authority, Dr. Carfew. But there is my daughter-in-law to consult. Let us hear her opinion."

Sophy turned quietly. She had been looking out of the window at the great, yew-walled garden that swept back from the library windows. She had been thinking how like graves the flower-beds looked. It was a beautiful but sad garden. But she had also been listening attentively to every word. The sudden yielding of her mother-in-law stirred a dark pool of humour lying at the roots of her tragedy. She realised that Lady Wychcote had decided to shift the self-assumed burden of her (Sophy's) "wifely duty" on to the burly shoulders of the specialist.

"I am sure you will agree with us, Mrs. Chesney," Bellamy said eagerly.

"Yes—in one way," she answered. "I am sure that to be in a sanatorium under Dr. Carfew's care is the only thing that can cure Cecil. But——" She hesitated. They all continued to look at her intently. She flushed, then said in a low, firm voice, "But I think it would be useless to put him there by force. He would never forgive it. He would be cured—yes—for the time being. But I know him. The moment that he was free he would begin all over again—unless he went of his own will."

Even Carfew became rather excited.

"But my dear lady! Allow me——" And he began to overwhelm her with scientific refutations of her theory. Bellamy looked aghast and chagrined. Gerald began to fidget with the fixtures on the library table, pressing his moustache between his lips and biting it as was his habit when distressed. Anne Harding gazed at Sophy in blank amazement. Then her brown little mouth pressed together. She was thinking hard.

"Do you mean to say," Lady Wychcote put in when Carfew had finished and Sophy still sat silent, "that, after urging me to send for Dr. Carfew, you will refuse to follow his advice? Refuse to join with me in this—this—evidently necessary course?"

"I can't advise using force on Cecil, Lady Wychcote. It would only make him hate us. It would do no lasting good. Only if he goes of his own accord will it do good."

Lady Wychcote looked expressively at Carfew, whom she had suddenly accepted as an ally. "You see what I have to contend with!" said this look.

They argued with her quite uselessly. She left the room presently, still resolved not to become a party to the removal of Cecil by force from Dynehurst.

The great man shrugged his shoulders, as who should say, "The ways of God and woman are past finding out." Then he looked at his watch. He had still to see the "patient" who had so unexpectedly consented to an interview. In accordance with Bellamy's urgent appeal he had consented to put certain facts before Chesney with unvarnished plainness.

Chesney received him with his sketchy smile.

"Salaam," said he. "It is a relief to receive the Caliph himself, after having had to put up for so long with the Chief Eunuch. At least you're a proper male," he concluded, looking with approval at the lean, massive form of the physician.

Carfew met this imperturbably. He put a few questions, which Chesney fended with his usual half-droll, half-savage ironies, then he said:

"Has it ever occurred to you to think what the end of your 'pleasant vice' will be, Mr. Chesney?"

Cecil frowned. But the next instant he resumed his callous, mocking expression.

"The 'ends' of things, O Guardian of the Faithful," said he, "are with Allah. He ties them into what bow-knots seemeth best to him."

"Shaitan can tie knots as well as Allah," replied Carfew, who was one of the best read men in England, as well as one of her foremost scientists. "He dips them in blood sometimes to warp them tighter," he added grimly.

"Speak more plainly to thy slave, O Chosen of Allah."

"I will," said Carfew. "From what you have said, so far—your allusion to my confrÈre Bellamy in particular—I gather that you look upon lack of virility as a thing to be scoffed at."

"Naturally. Does not Mahomet report Houris in paradise? There will be no guardians of the Harem there I fancy, O great Caliph!"

"The Paradise of Morphia may begin with houris," said Carfew dryly, "but it ends with horrors—sexless horrors. I would not jeer at sexlessness, if I were you. A fellow-feeling should make you kind."

Fury made Cecil natural if not kind.

"What the hell are you after, you damned charlatan?" he demanded savagely.

"I? I am after making myself clear, as an Irishman would say. I only mean to warn you that the little instrument you prize so much—the hypodermic syringe when used in connection with morphia—produces, in the end, the unfortunate condition which you so deride. Manhood, in every sense of the word, goes down before morphia, Mr. Chesney. I have promised your mother and Dr. Bellamy to put things plainly to you. Perhaps a natural curiosity as to the scientific aspect of your habit may induce you to listen."

This was in fact the case. Carfew's words, while enraging Cecil, had given him pause. He thrust out a sullen lip, glowering at the great man, like Minotaur at one who has just given the yearly boat-load of virgins a shove seaward.

"Well, damn it— I admit a 'low curiosity.' Get on, can't you?"

Carfew "got on." Coolly and methodically, as though unrolling a neatly illustrated script before the other's eyes, he presented to him a clear, detailed picture of the morphinomaniac's descent of Avernus.

"Little by little, all will go but that one, ever-increasing desire," he concluded; "honour first, then sex, then all human sympathy—then, a small matter perhaps, after these others, but to a well-bred man sufficiently unpleasant to contemplate—personal cleanliness. You will become filthy—you will not care. One thing alone of heaven and earth will be left you—the lust for morphia and its parasite—alcohol. So these two were available, you might stink in the nostrils of God and man—you would be quite indifferent. I remember," he broke off on another tone, seeming not to see the dull, unwilling look of arrestment, as it were, on Chesney's face, "I remember, years ago, reading a clever book by Knatchbull-Hugessen, a little volume of fairy-tales. Among these tales was one called 'Skitzland.' I rather suspect that he was having a fling at us specialists in that sketch; but then there are those who specialise on other things than science—morphia, for instance. To Skitzland were supposed to go those who had sacrificed all senses to one. A man in Skitzland would find himself only a huge ear, or an eye, or a stomach, and so on. Well, Mr. Chesney"—he turned sideways in his chair and fixed his cold, super-intelligent eyes on the sick man's—"your fate in the Skitzland of morphia will be to exist only as one huge, avid, diseased nerve-cell rank with the lust of morphia. Just that. Nothing more. And this diseased nerve-cell which will be you would slay Christ if He appeared again, and you thought the last dose of morphia were secreted in the Seamless Garment. Good-morning."

And he was gone before Cecil could moisten his dry lips to reply.

Anne found him sullenly resentful of the doctor's visit.

"I hope you've packed that old prime faker back to the courts of science," he grumbled, as she busied herself tidying his bed which he had rumpled with his ill-humoured tossings. "I'll none of him nor his damned mountebanking, that's flat."

"He'll none of you, unless you do as he wishes, and that's flatter," rejoined Anne tartly.

Chesney gave a whiff of utter contempt.

"Stick myself in one of his man-traps, I suppose you mean. I'll sign to Mephisto with my blood first!—Just let 'em try it on!" he added ominously.

"Oh you make me tired!—tired and sick," flashed Anne Harding. "You talk and act as if we were all trying to lure you to destruction, instead of wearing ourselves to the bone to save you from worse than death! Look here——" She drew up a chair and sat down squarely on it, her little black eyes like coals in which a red spark lingers. "I'm not going to stay on with you as things are, so I might just as well have my say out— I don't give a hang whether it's 'unprofessional' or not. So I'll just tell you this: Your mother went back on you this morning. I mean she went over to our side—we, who'd put you in a sanatorium ay or no. 'Twas your wife held out against it. And the more I think of it, the more I believe she's right. Says she, 'No, I won't lend myself to using force on him. Unless he goes of his own will it won't do any good.' I didn't think so then. But I do now. If your own will is bent on perdition, not all the other wills in the world are going to save you. That's why I'm going to give you up. I'm too useful, thank God! to waste my time on a man who's hell-bent on his own destruction."

She pushed the chair sharply back, and got up.

"Hold on!" cried Chesney as she turned away. He had listened to her without interruption, a most peculiar expression on his face. "Did I understand you to say that Sophy—that Mrs. Chesney, held out against the lot of 'em?"

"You did. I was one of the 'lot of 'em,' so I ought to know," replied Anne.

"She stood by me—in the face of all that pressure?"

"She stood up for what she believed in— I don't think that's you, just at present," said Anne viciously.

"Hold your tongue, spitfire, and let me think," returned Chesney, but without anger. He lay brooding deeply for some moments. Then he said: "Just go and ask Mrs. Chesney to come here a moment, will you?"

Anne consulted the bracelet watch.

"It's almost time for her to leave. Don't make her miss her train if I fetch her."

"I'll thank you to do what I ask!" said Chesney, looking dangerous. "It's not for you to make conditions when I wish to see my wife."

Anne glanced at him, then went meekly on the errand. She knew exactly when to insert bandelleros and when to apply balm.

Sophy came at once. She looked pale but quiet in her dark brown travelling gown and hat.

"You sent for me, but I was coming anyway to say good-by, Cecil," she said, in her low voice.

He looked at her very strangely, she thought. She never remembered having seen quite this expression on his face.

"It was not exactly to say good-by that I sent for you," he said after a pause. His voice, too, was low. There was some restrained emotion in it, whether anger or regret she could not tell. He continued:

"I sent for you in fact—to—to thank you, among other things."

"To thank me?"

She flushed cruelly. She thought he wished to bait her with his bitter mockery for this last time. He saw her slight figure brace itself, and her hands close nervously. He flushed himself.

"You needn't fear any brutishness on my part, not just now," he said, still in that low voice. "I'm not sneering. I want to thank you for holding out against the others this morning. Nurse Harding told me of it."

"Ah," said Sophy. She drew a deep breath. "I told them it would be no use," she added sadly.

"You were right. Thank you again."

His eyes ran over her travelling costume.

"So you're really going?" he said.

"Yes."

He was silent again. Then he said slowly:

"Well— I'm going, too."

"What!" said Sophy. She did not understand. She looked frightened. Did he mean that he would try to come with her—follow her?

"You misunderstand me—naturally," he said, with some bitterness. "I do not mean that I am going with you—agreeable as that might be." He could not suppress this mild sneer: his heart was very sore and angry under his cooler mood. "I mean that your confounded magnanimousness has got under my armour— I'm going to man-handle myself just because you wouldn't let me be man-handled by others."

Sophy held her breath. He knew that trick of hers. It meant that she was moved to the quick and afraid to believe her own senses. His set look broke a little.

"Yes, I mean it," he said rather gruffly. He sneered again, at himself this time. "I don't blame you for looking sceptical— I believe there's a good authority that says, 'A liar shall not be believed though he speak the truth.'"

White and red flame seemed to flicker over Sophy's face. She put up both hands against her breast.

"Cecil...?" she said.

"Yes, my girl," he answered flippantly; "this wary old rat is going to nip into the trap after the excellent bit of cheese you baited it with this morning. Now don't—don't—for God's sake, don't make a fuss!" he ended irritably.

But Sophy had flung herself on her knees beside the bed, hiding her face—regardless of veil and hat. Her voice, smothered in the bedclothes, reached him faintly:

"I'm not going to—don't be afraid— I'm not going to— I only wanted to thank—to thank——"

"Me?" asked Chesney sardonically, yet with a hungrily tender look back of his eyes that were bent on the crushed brown-velvet hat.

"No— God!" said Sophy softly.

Then she rose to her feet again.

"I won't try to say anything," she murmured. "I think you know what I am feeling——"

"Mh— I couldn't go that far. Women are sealed volumes to an average chap like me. Or, if they aren't sealed, they're written in some hierophantic script that's beyond the poor layman."

He took suddenly a more natural tone.

"But if I've given you a whit of the satisfaction that your plucky stand gave me—why, then, we're quits," he ended.

Sophy held out her hand.

"I shall be thinking of you all the time, Cecil."

"Thanks. You'll send a line now and then?"

"Indeed I will. Every day, if you like."

"No. That's too much to expect. I don't believe in setting kindness tasks. Tell the little chap good-by for me. Hope Italy will make him quite fit."

"I will. Good-by. Some day I'll— I can't say things now."

"Don't try. I don't want it."

He hesitated, still holding her hand. Then flushed again darkly.

"Would it—er—go too much against the grain for you to give the—er—condemned—a kiss?"

She stooped and kissed him warmly, lifting her veil, and pressing her cheek to his. The great arms held her tight an instant, then pushed her somewhat roughly away.

"Go—there's a good girl—please go——" he said.

This going of Sophy was very different from the last time that he had bidden her from him.

She went; and ten minutes later Nurse Harding came in again.

Her patient had turned his face to the wall and flung an arm over it. She glanced at him curiously from time to time, busying herself here and there about the room in her mouse-like way. Then she drew up the prescribed dose of poison into the little glass and metal instrument, and went over to the bed.

"I say, sir," she began, almost shyly for Nurse Harding. "I wouldn't bother you, but it's time for your hypo——"

He did not stir. Anne blinked.

"Want to play 'good boy' and lengthen the time, sir?"

No answer and no movement. Anne went softly and laid the syringe on the table. Then she came back. She stood for a moment, biting her sharp little knuckles and staring down at the broad back. Then she burst out:

"Mrs. Chesney's told me, sir."

Again she broke off, and again burst forth.

"I—I always said you were an Old Sport.... Now I'll—I'll be hanged—if you ain't the sportiest Old Sport as ever was!"

She spun on her heel, and went out, clacking the door most unprofessionally. She went to have two minutes of what she called a "good blub." It was Sophy's joy, together with Chesney's sudden capitulation, that had upset Nurse Harding. She had become excessively attached to Sophy, and, in spite of all his fundamental brutality, she had a "soft spot" for her patient.