'I wanted to speak to you,' she says, a spark of fever brightening the chill wretchedness of her look. 'I have something to say to you; that was why I sent for you.' 'Of course, of course!' he answers soothingly. 'I was delighted to come.' 'I can't stay more than a minute,' she says restlessly. 'I must go back to him; I have never left him for eight and forty hours. He is asleep now--only under opiates--but an opiate sleep is better than none, is it not?' consulting his face with a piteous appeal. 'Much--much better,' replies Talbot earnestly. 'You have heard--they have told you--how ill he is?' A sort of hard break makes itself heard in her voice; but she masters it impatiently. 'Yes, they have told me.' 'What have they told you?' asks she sharply. 'I daresay that they have told you a great deal more than the truth. If they have told you that there is no hope, they have told you wrong. They had no right to say so; there is hope!' 'They never told me that there was not,' replies he, still more soothingly than before; for it seems to him that no finger can be laid too gently on that terrible mother-ache. 'It all came so suddenly,' says she, putting her hand up with a bewildered air to her damp forehead and disordered hair. 'And yet now it seems _centuries_ since he was running about. _How_ he ran and jumped, did not he? There never was such an active child. And now it seems _centuries_ that he has been lying in his little bed.' For a moment she breaks down entirely, but fights her way on again. 'It was only a cold at first--quite a slight cold! He was not the least ill with it, and I thought nothing of it; and then on Tuesday there came an acrobatic company to Darnton'--the little neighbouring market-town--'and he was so excited about them, and begged so hard to be allowed to go and see them, that I took him; and he was so delighted with them--he clapped and applauded more than anybody in the house; and all the evening afterwards he was trying to do the things he had seen them do--you know how clever he always is in imitating people--and telling nurse about them. Nurse and I agreed that we had never seen him in such spirits. But he did not sleep well; he was always dreaming about them, and jumping up; and next morning he was in a high fever, and I sent for the doctor, and he has been getting worse ever since; and _now_----' Again she breaks down, but again recovering herself, goes on rapidly: 'But it is not the same as if it were a grown-up person, is it? Children have such wonderful recovering power, have not they?--down one day and up the next. They pull through things that would kill you or me, do not they? He _will_ pull through, won't he? You think that he _will_ pull through?' 'I am sure that he will,' replies Talbot earnestly. It is, of course, an answer absolutely senseless, and in the air; but what other can he give, with those miserable eyes fastened in such desperate asking upon his?