And the unaltered note took on a tremolo of which he was both aware and ashamed; but still their eyes were frankly locked. "I can marry nobody, Doctor Dollar." "The man I mean isn't fit to black your boots! But he'd protect you, he'd help you, and you would be the making not only of him but of his dream--and not only _his_ little dream----" It was her hand that stopped him. It had taken his across the little table. "The man you mean is worth ten million of me! But I can never marry him or anybody. And you, and you alone, know why!" She bent her brave eyes back on the Campagna; a pale tufted heath was swimming by; gum-trees hardly heightened the prevailing neutral tint; a modern corrugated roof, pinned in place by a few primeval boulders, held her attention on its swift course across the window-panes; and when she looked round, Lady Vera was all alone. IV THE GOLDEN KEY "Shelley was quite right!" exclaimed the young man at the book-shelf, with the prematurely bent back turned upon Doctor Dollar at his old oak desk. "He was never wrong when he stuck to poetry," said the doctor, looking up from an unfinished prescription on which the ink was nevertheless dry. The other gave a guilty start. He was an immaculate young wreck, with the fashionable glut of hair plastered back from a good enough face, as if to make the most of its haggard pallor. And he was in full evening dress, for the crime doctor's patients came at all hours. "Did I say anything?" he asked with exaggerated embarrassment. "You thought something aloud," said Dollar, smiling. "Don't let it worry you; that's not one of the straws that shows an ill wind. What is it of Shelley's, Mr. Edenborough?" "Only a bit of one of his letters," said the young man. "I just happened to open them at something that rather appealed to me." And the book shot back into its place. "Not the bit about the prussic acid, I hope?" suggested the doctor, for all the world as if in fun. "What was that?" said Edenborough, with a face that would not have imposed upon an infant. "A little commission from Shelley to Trelawny, for a small quantity of the 'essential oil of bitter almonds,' as he called it, so that he might 'hold in his possession that golden key to the chamber of perpetual peace.'" "That was it," said the youth at length. "I may as well be honest about it. But I don't know how on earth you knew!" The doctor gave a kindly little laugh. "Only by knowing the book," he assured the patient. "It's rather a notorious passage--and you had just been clamoring for at least a silver key to some chamber of temporary peace!" "You said you would give me one, Doctor Dollar."