Thurso threw back his head, and drew in a long breath of this cold, pure air. It was extraordinarily invigorating. And at the same moment he suddenly felt his mouth water at a thought that had come into his mind. He was beginning to want again. "But he has no idea that it will cure me?" he asked, with a certain suspicious persistence. Then Maud knew her time had come. "No; he never thought it would cure you, and he doesn't profess to be able to cure you himself. But, Thurso, there is another chance, perhaps. He sanctioned our trying it." "What chance? Some American doctor? I'll go to anybody--doctor, quack, hypnotist--what you please." "It isn't a quack I want you to go to. I want you to see if a Christian Science healer cannot do anything for you." Thurso was silent a moment. "It has been a plot, then?" he asked, in that dreadful cold tone in which he spoke of his wife. "Yes, dear; but don't speak like that," said Maud. "You speak as if it was a plot against you instead of a plot for you. I didn't tell you in England, because I was afraid you might refuse to come. That is frank, is it not? I have been responsible for it all." Suspicion and hate were awaking in Thurso's brain. He felt so much better and stronger to-day, and his brain was working again after weeks of torpidity. He told himself he was becoming wonderfully acute and far-sighted. "I don't think I quite believe that," he said. "I believe Catherine had a hand in it. Surely it is clear. She wanted to be left alone with Villars." Maud made a gesture of despair. "Oh, you are mad," she said. "It isn't you who speak when you say dreadful false things like that: it's the demon that possesses you, Thurso--that horrible drug. It has poisoned your body, and it has poisoned your soul." Then, with that bewildering rapidity that she knew and dreaded, his mood changed again. But the change, though he was still in the darkness of abysmal despair, was for the better. Anything was better than that vile hate, those incredible suspicions. "Yes, I am poisoned--I am altogether poisoned," he said quietly. Maud turned an imploring face to him. "No, dear, you are not altogether poisoned," she said; "and the fact of your saying that you are shows there is some little sound piece left. If you were altogether poisoned, you wouldn't know it; there would be nothing left to tell you that you were poisoned. But there is: you feel regret still. I saw it in your eyes just now, and though it cuts me to the heart, I love and rejoice to see it there. It is just your regret, your desire to do better, which is the precious soil out of which your salvation must spring." Her voice died on the last words, and she spoke in a whisper barely audible. "Oh, Thurso, if you only knew how I cared!" she said. For that moment he was touched. He looked at her with pity. "Poor Maud!" he said.