"Something better," he repeated, in a changed voice, with an effect of shrinking to his usual proportions. His arm fell to his side, and he turned away to hide his altered look. "I'll fight for this boy," he said. "I'll fight the whole world for him." "You looked," suggested Lilla gently, "as if you were going to fight me, too." "You? No, you are my ally. Or, if you please, I am yours; for neither of us can do anything without you." At midnight, when Lilla returned to the doorway of his bedroom, David was not asleep. She sat down on the edge of the bed. A beam of light from the corridor touched her slender figure wrapped in yellow silk, and her braided hair outlined, round her head, by a narrow golden halo. The rain had ceased, and the breeze from the window was laden with the odor of the saturated earth. Falteringly he asked her if she was chilly. She was surprised, having been aware for a long while only of this pity and this remorse. "You have suffered to-day," she said. He responded: "The penalty one pays for having acquired great riches is the fear of losing them." She was silent for a time, then murmured: "When this piece is finished, or to-morrow if you like, we might go abroad? Over there we could find any number of nice, secluded places. Some Greek island might please you? The climate is very invigorating." "Would you like it?" "If it would make you happier." He uttered a groan: "How I torment you! It must be some devil in me that prompts me to this ingratitude. All that you've done for me, and I'm not satisfied. You are perfection." She laughed dismally, raising her face in the gloom of the bed canopy that enshrouded them like the shadows of a catafalque. Perfection! A pitiable heroine, an unstable creature tossed about from one compassion to another, from a contemptible dissatisfaction here to a half-hypocritical idea of reparation there, and now to self-abasement! She was sick from disgust at her ingratitude to this poor invalid, through whom she had become majestic, holding fate back so that beauty, and even life, might miraculously survive. She seemed to have emerged from an ignoble dream; she longed to merit again, at least in her devotion to this supine figure, that word, perfection. Suddenly her bosom swelled not only with compunction, but with love also--since it was she, indeed, who had recreated him, and since without the nourishment of her daily reassurances he must die. "Help me to deserve those words," she besought him, bending down through the shadows. Her tears moistened his lips, and upon that revelation he stammered: "At this moment I feel that you're mine." "Not only this moment. Always." CHAPTER XLIV In the morning, when Brantome had departed for the city, Lilla said to Hamoud: "Please tell the servants that if any one should ask for me I'm not at home."