"Hush, Gerald! Don't make anything of it. Of course I came. Keep quiet now; you mustn't try to talk." "Dearest woman," he insisted, with his voice full of tears, "I don't even know what I said to you, but I know that the whole thing was atrocious. You standing there like a big angel, with your innocent arms full of flowers, and I barking at you like a cur!" "Nothing of the sort. You were sick. Who lays up anything against a sick man?" "Excuse it in me like this, Aurora, if you can: that having such regard for you, I had pride before you and could not endure that you should see me when I felt myself to be a disgusting object. So, mortified to the point of torture, I lost my temper,--I've got that bad habit, you know,--and insanely railed to keep you off." "And didn't succeed. Come, come; what nonsense all this is! Put it out of your mind and think of nothing but getting well. Now you--" "It is not nearly so important that I should get well," he testily persisted, "as that I should ask your forgiveness. It has been weighing upon me and burning like bedclothes of hot iron, the horror of having so meanly and ungratefully offended you." "Why should you feel so bad about it as long as I don't? Put it all out of your mind, just as I do out of mine. There, it's all right. Now keep still except to answer my questions. You've had the doctor?" "Yes, dear." "What's he giving you?" "You can see--there on the stand--those bottles." "And hot things on your chest?" "Yes; _semedilino_. I don't know what you call it in English." "Flaxseed, I guess. How can poor old Giovanna do everything for you?" "I don't know," he answered vaguely. "She does." Perceiving that by a reaction from his excitement he was suddenly fatigued to the point of no longer being able to speak at all or even keep his eyes open, she asked nothing more, but with a practised hand straightened his bolster, smoothed his pillow and drew the covers evenly and snugly up to his chin. "Don't you be afraid," he heard her say above him, as it seemed to him a long time after, at the same moment that he felt her give his shoulder a little squeeze to impress her saying: "I won't let anything happen to you." * * * * * He entered a state which was neither quite sleep nor quite waking. He was not dreaming, yet the world within his eyelids was peopled with creatures and varied by incidents departing from the known and foreseen. Something malevolent pertained to the personalities, something disquieting to the actions; suffering and oppression resulted from his inability to get away from them. They came and went, one scene melted into another, sometimes beautiful, sometimes repulsive, a sickly disagreeableness being common to all, and the fatigue involved with watching the spectacle of them weighing like a physical burden.