h, for now her soul was in travail of him. She who
had given him life might now have given him death. If he died it would
be she who had killed him. "Happiness hunter ... happiness hunter...."
her own phrase rang in her mind.

And this was what her son had come to, while she was absorbed in hunting
happiness....

She would not leave him now even long enough to change her clothes.
Nurse Fleming brought her some fresh linen and a dressing-gown to the
bedside, and put them on her as if she had been a child. She submitted
quietly. The nurse unbound her hair, brushed and plaited it, then made
her take an easy chair that she rolled up.

When Bellamy entered again Sophy roused from her tranced watching long
enough to ask him to get Anne Harding if it were possible. He went at
once to do so.

There was no night or day to Sophy now. The grim, candle-lit hours went
by monotonous as a linked chain paid out of darkness into darkness by
invisible hands.

Then came intervals of horror--struggles for breath. Wild shadows on the
ceiling as nurse and doctor fought together with that other Shadow.

Anne Harding came. Sophy stared at her blindly, and said: "I thought
you'd come, Cecil...."

Then after many days, each as a thousand years, a voice came through the
smothering blackness in her mind. It said:

"He will live.... He's past the crisis...."

The blackness closed in again.

She came to herself on the bed in Cecil's dressing-room. There was an
old etching of Magdalene Tower on the wall at the bed's foot.

She thought: "What a pity to call it 'Maudlin' instead of Magdalene...."
Then everything weltered in on her at once--waves, wreckage, as of a
world after flood. She was on her feet. She was in the other room. Anne
Harding and Bellamy had hold of her. Her head felt hollow and very
light. Her voice sounded light and piping in her own ears.

"Tell ... tell...." she was saying.

Anne Harding put her finger to her lips--glanced towards a smooth white
bed. There was a little round of sunlight dancing on it. "Ssssh...."
whispered Anne. "He's asleep.... We mustn't wake him. You've been very
ill yourself, but our little man's doing finely."

They helped her to a chair beside the bed--Cecil's old leather armchair.
Anne Harding could see his huge form in it as he used to sit glowering
at her between the reduced doses of morphia. It gave her an odd feeling
to put Sophy in that chair, and tuck a rug about her.

They all three