“The burnt child dreads the fire, but you don’t want to stop the child dreading it, you want to stop it being burned. Now what do you anticipate will happen if she’s left to scream?” “Neither her heart nor her brain will stand much more of it,” said Dr. Raymond gravely. “I can’t answer for the consequences if she keeps calling for you and you don’t go—anything may happen. On the other hand she may not recognise you even if you’re there. Her brain is caught on one point and sticks there, the excitement keeps mounting and nothing I’ve been able to do has touched it.” “She’ll recognise me all right,” said Mr. Brett with conviction, “and she’ll get off her point—when she’s made it. If she was the only person concerned I’d leave things the way they are. But I’ve got my other daughter to consider, and that does me in. If I come along to the Princess Girla, I want you to undertake to get Mrs. Sterling back to bed and keep her there.” Dr. Raymond agreed with alacrity, and hurried back to his patient. Mr. Brett got up slowly and put on his bedroom slippers with reluctance. He was by no means convinced that he was doing the right thing, but he felt that neither Elise nor John would have understood his running counter to the doctor. The servants, white and trembling, were all assembled in the big hall listening to the acute and terrible sound that filled the house. Mr. Brett looked at them contemplatively over the banisters. “You can all make tracks for bed,” he said in his steady soothing drawl. “You can take my word for it—when there’s that amount of noise in an illness there’s no immediate danger. All except the cook, and she can send up some hot drinks to Mr. and Mrs. Sterling’s apartments.” Then he opened Hermione’s door and walked to the foot of her bed. Even Mr. Brett was momentarily impressed by Hermione’s appearance. Her face was hardly human, it was wild and strained beyond recognition, her fixed eyes had an awful stare in them of blank terror. She had reached the acutest point of consciousness, beyond which the mind passes out of the power of personality. “I’m not! I’m not! I’m not!” screamed Hermione. In the absolute stillness of the room her tones gathered an incredible beating force: they neither changed their accent nor their sound, but swung on like the regular rise and fall of a piston rod in an engine. Elise knelt in a crumpled heap on the floor by her sister’s bed, trying to hold one of Hermione’s burning, restless hands. The other clutched and plucked persistently at the counterpane. Nurse Davies made ice packs by the bedside. John and Dr. Raymond clung together by the window as if their mutual impotence was a protection to them. Mr. Brett faced his daughter consideringly. He fixed his quiet, dominating eyes upon hers, without anxiety. For one astonishing moment the room emptied itself of sound. Mr. Brett said steadily and gently, “Hermione, I guess you have me beat.”