He was very cautious about this dose of morphia. He felt that he must guard in every possible way against the nausea that might follow it, thus taken without atropine. Sophy was pleased and surprised to hear that he had seen Camenis, and still more surprised when he said that he was going to bed at once, and would she be a dear girl and read aloud to him. He was looking forward with a half-shamed excitement to the luxury of relief and stimulation which he knew the morphia, so long refrained from, would give him to a superlative degree. But he knew also that it would be apt to make him garrulous. He did not want to talk. He was afraid of "giving himself away" somehow. So he asked Sophy to read aloud because he did not want to be alone either. It would intensify that sensation of blissful bien Être which lay just ahead of him to have some one near. This feeling was akin to that with which a child, cosily in bed, regards its nurse sewing beside a shaded lamp.

Yes; he would go to bed, take the morphia, and then, later, the salicylate of soda. Two days of it would knock out the sciatica, that old doctor had said. Well—the morphia would keep him from being bored, in addition to easing his pain. One was never bored while under the effects of morphia. He would take one dose now, sleep off the bad effects. Then, next day, take the other in the same way. The third—well, it depended on how he would be feeling whether he took the third dose or not.

Sophy sent Luigi to kindle a fire in his bedroom before she would let him undress there. The Mareng, as the Scirocco is called on Lago Maggiore, had been blowing all day. Now a fine drizzle had begun to fall. As she went to find the book that Cecil had asked her to read aloud, she thought of how odd it was that his illnesses should always be associated in her mind with rainy weather. And the weather had been so glorious nearly all the time, until now. Some splendid Temporali—the crashing thunderstorms of that region—had come in July and August. But there had been no steady, sullen rain such as was now falling.

As for Chesney, he congratulated himself on having this acute attack just at this time. The Mareng, Luigi told him, would not last more than two or three days. The Wind-Flower was at Taroni's having her bottom scraped for the races.

As soon as he was rid of this deuced pain, he would go and look up a rowboat. He needed exercise. There were good boats, cheaper than elsewhere, Amaldi had said, at a little village called Cerro, on the other side of the Lake.

When Luigi had kindled the fire, he went up to his bedroom and closed and locked the door. The blaze from dried roots and scraps of wood looked very jolly tucked away in the corner like that. He glanced at the fine strands of rain outside his window, and the soggy brown of the balcony beyond, and thought the contrast only made the fire seem jollier.

Then he took off his coat, spread a fresh towel on the bed, and laid out the hypodermic syringe and one of the glass globules upon it. There was one instant when, as he stood with the syringe poised above the opened capsule, a strange impulse came over him. He thought: "What if I throw all this stuff into the fire? Just go to bed, take the salicylate—'grin and bear it'?" His heart beat violently. Then, with a sudden gesture, he thrust the nose of the syringe into the capsule, and drew the piston up till the cylinder was filled with the colourless liquid. Each dose of the solution held half a grain of morphia. He screwed the needle into place—pushed up his shirt-sleeve.... Another instant and the needle was home in his flesh. He pressed the piston gently down—withdrew the needle, and rubbed the puncture with a bit of cotton soaked in spirit. Then he cleaned the syringe, put a wire through the needle, locked all away into his travelling-bag, and, after setting the door slightly ajar, undressed and got into bed. In two minutes the little clutch at his midriff told him that the morphia was at its work.... Then he called to Sophy. And as he lay there with slow bliss stealing over him, and heard her light step coming up the stair, he justified his action to himself with persistent and plausible reiteration. The pain was already lessening—he felt tender and affectionate towards Sophy—longed to talk to her. But he kept saying to himself: "No, no—I must not. I must not, on any account." So he only smiled at her and moved his head against the pillow in assent, when she asked if he felt easier, warm in bed like this. When she sat down in a low chair beside the bed and began to read, he reached out and took her free hand, holding it, playing with her rings—that vague smile still on his face.

The rain fell faster and faster—it became a heavy downpour, rattling on the magnolia leaves outside and veiling the more distant trees. Sophy read until he seemed dozing—then went down to her lonely dinner in the ugly little dining-room. Somehow she felt strangely depressed. The Mareng seemed to have soaked into her very soul.

Chesney stayed in bed three days. He took all the morphia, but he also took the salicylate prescribed by Camenis. He suffered a good deal from nausea; but when he got up again, on the morning of the fourth day, his attack of sciatica was entirely over. He felt abominably weak, though. On the second day, he had sent Luigi to Pallanza to buy some good Cognac—a small glass of this revived him. He scrupulously avoided taking more than a small quantity at a time. He did not for a moment intend to lapse into his old habits.

But after he had been about for two days, back came the sciatic pains. He grumbled savagely. The Mareng had ceased. The Maggiore seemed kindling the heavens with its clear, fierce blast. The sun would have been hot as in August but for the wind. There seemed no earthly reason for the return of the sciatica. He must get rid of this nuisance before the races, by hook or by crook. He shrank from the idea of taking more morphia in its Italian form. The nausea had been too wearing. Besides, he did not wish to go to Caccia's a second time for it. It occurred to him to take the motor-boat and run over to Stresa. The first chemist there would probably have English or American preparations of the drug. He succeeded in finding a little case of an American preparation of morphia and atropine. But he was still extremely cautious, not only in regard to others, but about himself. Such doses as he took were very small (he would cut the tablets in half with his penknife—carefully burning the blade first in a candle-flame). And he always took them at bedtime, so that by the next morning the extreme dryness of his mouth would have passed. The pain kept nagging him. And in the intervals between the doses of morphia that hateful weakness came over him. He began to drink Cognac regularly with his meals. This worried Sophy—she could not think so much brandy good for him. At her suggestion he bought some Scotch whiskey in Pallanza. But the smooth, oily liquor, tempered by soda, was not what he wanted. It was even distasteful to him. What he craved was the keen bite of the raw brandy in his stomach and blood.

He grew very irritable at times, under the double stress of the intermittent pain, and the desire for larger doses of morphia than he dared take. His extreme caution would not let him continue drinking the Cognac at meals, since Sophy had objected to it. It might make her suspect something. So he fell into the way of taking a glass here and there, wherever he chanced to be, at some cafÉ in Intra or Pallanza, or even in Ghiffa.

He did not find Amaldi so companionable, either, since he had been suffering in this way.

"Rather a wooden chap, that Amaldi, when one comes to see more of him," he said to Sophy.

One evening, when Amaldi chanced to be at Villa Bianca, Chesney again asked his wife to sing. She went at once to the piano. Amaldi sat leaning forward, looking down at his hands, which were clasped loosely between his knees. Chesney kept glancing towards him vexedly all the time that Sophy was singing. Amaldi's expression was rather "wooden."

"Sing that Grieg thing," Chesney had said. She sang Solweg's song from the Peer Gynt series. It seemed to Amaldi that he could not bear it, when the voice of the woman he loved poured over him in that soft wave of heart-break. His face looked ever more and more "wooden" as she sang on. When she stopped and Chesney fixed his eyes on the other man with that sort of irritated challenge in them, Amaldi said in a cut-and-dried tone: "Thanks. It was most beautiful."

Chesney couldn't get over it for the rest of the evening. He mimicked Amaldi's tone and manner to Sophy again and again.

"Damned constipated mind the fellow's got, by God!" he said. "He hears for the first time a great imperial-purple voice like yours, and all he says is: 'Thanks; most beautiful.' Why didn't he say: 'Very nice,' and have done with it!"

Sophy shivered at his ever-increasing irritability. Sometimes she thought the gentle Luigi would surely burst into flame under Cecil's fierce cursings and depart forthwith; but the little man merely looked stolid, as if slightly deaf, on these occasions. She thought that Lombards, whether noble or peasant, had singular self-control, for something in the little Milanese's manner under provocation reminded her vaguely of Amaldi. Then one day she heard him remark to Maria, the cook, who also seemed astonished at his patience:

"Cosa te voeuret? L'È matt quel diavol d'un milord. E quella bella sciora l'È tanto bona." (What'll you have? He's mad, this devil of a milord, and his lovely lady is so good!)

One afternoon Amaldi called to tell Chesney that The Wind-Flower was in the water again. He found Sophy alone on the terrace. She was sewing on a little blouse for Bobby, who had worn out most of his wardrobe. She loved making his little fineries herself. Amaldi was more natural in his manner that afternoon. It was long since he had seen her alone. Sophy had recovered from the first shock of her husband's return; she also felt more natural. Before long she was talking to Amaldi almost eagerly. She had been thinking of her far-away home in Virginia when he arrived. She ran to fetch some photographs of it to show him. Chesney was away in the motor-boat—at Stresa, she believed.... But at that moment Chesney was driving back from Pallanza, having left the motor there to be mended. It had broken down just before he reached the embarcadero, and he had been obliged to row ashore. He was in an evil temper. His leg was "drilling" again, and he had had two glasses of Cognac within an hour.

When he reached the lower terrace he looked up and saw Sophy and Amaldi bending together over the photographs like two children over a picture-book. She was talking eagerly, looking often at Amaldi. There was a pretty flush on her face. Her grey eyes sparkled.... Chesney was so gruff in manner that Amaldi went almost immediately. Sophy sat gazing at her husband with a puzzled expression. She had not yet realised that Chesney had taken a dislike to Amaldi as sudden as his first liking.

"Well, I must say you're making up for lost time!" he threw out roughly.

"How?" she asked, astonished, not getting his meaning.

"Why, a week ago you hadn't a word to throw that chap; now you palaver with him like an old crony."

Sophy reddened with anger.

"Please don't speak to me in this way," she said coldly.

He reddened, too.

"You speak to Amaldi as you damn please—I'll speak to you as I damn please," he said.

"No," said Sophy, "for I shan't stay to listen to you."

And she gathered up the photographs and went into the house with her head high.

"Women are the devil!" said Chesney, scowling after her. "Women are the devil!" he repeated, flinging himself morosely into a chair, and gazing down at the outstretched leg which ached so infernally. Then he rose, went upstairs and injected a fourth of a grain of morphia into it. He sent word that he would not be down to dinner. At twelve o'clock that night, he took another fourth.