"Listen, Eustace. I am going to be ill. Get a nurse and a doctor and go away. Perhaps it is catching. And if I fall through the floor," she added laughing, "it is so hard to stop!" "Put your arms round my neck," he said, for she had risen and was swaying like a flame in the wind--the white rose leaves fell in showers. "I don't think I want to, now," she said, astonished that it should be so. "Oh, yes, you do!"--He spoke as one speaks to a child. "Put your arms round Eustace's neck,--your own Eustace that's so fond of you." "Are you?" she said, and her arms fell across his shoulders. "Of course I am," he said. "Hold tight." He lifted her and carried her, not quite steadily, for carrying a full-grown woman is not the bagatelle novelists would have us believe it. He opened her bedroom door, laid her on the white, lacy coverlet of her bed. "Now," he said, "you are to lie quite still. You've been so good and dear and unselfish. You've always done everything I've asked, even difficult things. This is quite easy. Just lie and think about me till I come back." He bent over the bed and kissed her gently. "Ah!" she sighed. There was a flacon on the table by the bed. He expected it to be jasmine. It was lavender water; he drenched her hair and brow and hands. "That's nice," said she. "I'm not really ill. I think it's nice to be ill. Quite still do you mean, like that?" She folded her hands, the white roses still clasped. The white bed, the white dress, the white flowers. Horrible! "Yes," he said firmly, "just like that. I shall be back in five minutes." He was not gone three. He came back and--till the doctor came, summoned by the concierge--he sat by her, holding her hands, covering her with furs from the wardrobe when she shivered, bathing her wrists with perfumed water when she threw off the furs and spoke of the fire that burned in her secret heart of cold clouds. When the doctor came he went out by that excellent Irishman's direction and telegraphed for a nurse. Then he waited in the cool shaded sitting-room, among the flowers. This was where he had hit her--as she said. There on the divan she had cried, leaning her head against his sleeve. Here, half-way to the door, they had kissed each other. No, he would certainly not go to England while she was ill. He felt sufficiently like a murderer already. But he would write. He glanced at her writing-table. A little pang pricked him, and drove him to the balcony. "No," he said, "if we are to hit people, at least let us hit them fairly." But all the same he found himself playing with the word-puzzle whose solution was the absolutely right letter to Betty's father, asking her hand in marriage. "Well," he asked the doctor who closed softly the door of the bedroom and came forward, "is it brain-fever?"