Until now her religion had chiefly been a desire for freedom and an unflinching love of truth. In her great anxiety this became fatalism, unbending, mystical fate. Everything startled her; she was always seeing signs and warnings. It seemed as though the boy could only lie on the side that was affected, otherwise it pained him so that he cried out ... and each time she helped him, she could not make this out at all. She propped him up with air-cushions; he replied by heartrending entreaties to be left in peace. She no longer knew what was right or wrong. He would not even let her come near his legs; he always wanted to have his knees bent and the one knee in a certain position over the other, ... and she had to yield to these inexplicable fancies and let herself be set aside as superfluous and troublesome. Was this to show her that she must accustom herself to the idea that she was always in the way? In the end this would quite wear her out. Her fright from the last time she had moved him till the next time she would have to do it, would have been more than enough. But all the fancies and ideas she took into her head nearly drove her mad; she spoke to no one about it. This new phase with the legs seemed to her so hopelessly mystical in its unreasonableness, that it made her afraid of the boy; he was no longer her boy. Just by chance later on she discovered a good deal of swelling round the ankles. She had always heard that this was the beginning of the end; she could scarcely drag herself down the stairs to the study, where the minister sat in a cloud of smoke. He saw her enter pale and terrified in her white night-dress. "My dear, what is the matter?" He listened to her, went up with her, and looked at the swelling, fell on his knees by the bedside, burying his face in his hands; he was praying. Across his father's head she heard the short hurried breathing of the little fellow, saw the shining yet indifferent look he turned on him. She, too, would have prayed; but at that moment the boy pushed his father away with his hand; he could not bear the smell of tobacco. In that way he pushed her away from a possible prayer. Dr. Kent's kind smile, his quiet, comforting assurance that the illness was the same as when he first had discovered the inflammation, that no worse symptom had set in, and that the swelling probably came from the strained position of the knees, relieved them so that Josephine cried for joy. He examined various matters, thereby confirming what he had already said. That night Josephine slept better than she had done for long, but still she felt weaker than ever before.