He saw that she was pleased that he had spoken to her thus--though he was in some doubt if she appreciated what he had actually said. But already the shuttle of an incipient friendship was beginning to dart between them. Two high clear souls had met and recognised each other. "Well, suppose we get him to bed, Doctor," she said. "We can carry him up between us. There are two maids, and Tumpany is quite sober enough to help." "Quite!" the doctor answered. "I rather like that man upon a first meeting." Mary laughed--a low contralto laugh. "She has a sense of humour too!" the doctor thought. "Yes," she said, "Tumpany is a good fellow at heart. And, like most people who drink, when he is himself he is a quite delightful person." She went out into the hall, tall and beautiful, the jewels in her hair and on her hands sparkling in the candlelight. Morton Sims took one of the candles from the table and went up to the couch. A shadow flickered over the face of the man who was lying there. It was but momentary, but in that instant the watcher became cold. The silver of the candle-stick stung the palm of a hand which was suddenly wet. This tranquil, lovely room with its soft yellow light, dissolved and shifted like a scene in a dream. . . . . . . It was a raw winter's morning. The walls were the whitewashed walls of a prison mortuary. There was a smell of chloride of lime. . . . And lying upon a long zinc slab, with little grooves and depressions running down to the eye-hole of a drain, was a still figure whose face was a ghastly caricature of this face, hideously, revoltingly alike . . . Mary Lothian, Tumpany, and two maid-servants came into the room, and with some difficulty the poet was carried upstairs. He was hardly laid upon his bed when the rain came, falling in great sheets with a loud noise, cooling and purging the hot air. CHAPTER III PSYCHOLOGY OF THE INEBRIATE, AND THE LETTER OF JEWELLED WORDS "Verbosa ac grandis epistola venit a Capreis." --_Juvenal._ It was three days after the accident. Gilbert lay in bed. His head was crossed with bandages, his wrist was wrapped with lint and a wet compress was upon the ankle of his strained left foot. The windows of his bedroom were wide to the sun and air of the morning. There were two pleasant droning sounds. A bee was flying round the room, and down below in the garden Tumpany was mowing the strip of lawn before the house. Gilbert was very tranquil. He was wrapped round with a delicious peace of mind and body. He seemed to be floating in some warm ether of peace. There was a table by the side of his bed. In a slender vase upon it was a single marguerite daisy with its full green stem, its rays of white--Chinese white in a box of colours--round the central gold. Close to his hand, upon the white turned down sheet was a copy of "John Inglesant." It was a book he loved and could always return to, and he had had his copy bound in most sumptuous purple.