m where there rose to meet her, from
behind a desk, a calm-looking man with a bushy red and white beard.
His gaze took in, in a flash, her widow's weeds, her tall, slim person,
her delicate, pale brown face, her features composed and yet a trifle
wild, her whole effect of elegance and singularity.

"I feel as if I am going mad," she blurted out, by way of greeting.

The famous physician smoothed his beard reflectively.

"There is a story, perhaps?"

And when she had told him everything, he remarked, "I will make out for
you a series of appointments."

"The cause will remain," she returned.

"But I shall change your thoughts about the cause," he said paternally.

"No!" she exclaimed, in a voice vibrant with apprehension. For she
would have gone on risking this madness that she feared, rather than
let him efface from her conscious thoughts, or even dim, one
recollection of Lawrence.

He understood. Casting down his eyes, he reflected:

"Apparently this charming person has never been told how extreme an
example she is of our poor civilisees. For the sake of a dead man she
is willing, after all, to commit slow suicide. If she continues to
nurse this grief which is indissoluble from her love, with her
predispositions she will go the usual way, probably ending in a psychic
collapse. Ah, yes, if she had not come to me she would just have
drifted on and on into the devil knows what. As it is, I don't fancy
that I could make her quite unemotional; but that grief--there's no
reason why she should go through life under that additional burden!
She is exquisite, young, sure of many happy years with some one else,
if she is cured of this preoccupation with that fellow who is gone.
Shall I ask permission to try to do her that favor?"

The celebrated specialist, raising his eyes, said benevolently to Lilla:

"At least, madam, you have no objection to my stopping those nightmares
of yours?"

Every day, for three weeks, she returned to the consultation room, sat
down in a deep leather chair, fixed her eyes on a bright metal ball,
and fell asleep. The famous physician found her, as he had expected,
extremely impressionable. On waking, she had no objective recollection
of what had been said to her.

But the dreams ceased to torment her.

With a strange, almost unprecedented feeling of peace she traveled down
to Lake Como. Here she dwelt in a house smothered in flowers, on a
promontory that was almost an island.