f to those who can cure him. I won't risk my life and
Bobby's--for his selfishness--his brutal self-indulgence. I wanted you
to understand why I go--just how I feel. It is only fair. I am going to
Italy with Bobby. Nothing can change me--nothing that you, or any one
else, can say. Nothing--nothing!"

Lady Wychcote received this with bitter silence; then she said in a low
voice of the most concentrated resentment:

"So you propose to leave the burden of your wifely duty on _my_
shoulders?"

"No!" cried Sophy passionately. "As things are now, I have no wifely
duty! The only duty left me is my duty to my son and to myself! I have
no husband! And while this vile habit lasts, you have no son! He loves
only morphia. Morphia is wife and mother and child and God to him. Oh,
Lady Wychcote, do you, too, leave him! Leave him to those who can save
him. Forsake him so that, from sheer loneliness, he will be forced to
find himself again. It is the only way--the only, only way!"

One cannot speak out of the fulness of the heart with genuine, human
passion, and not move something--even if it be only the outmost,
thinnest veil of the atmosphere of another spirit. Lady Wychcote was
stirred unwillingly by this ardent appeal, but she would not yield her
pride.

"Pardon me," she said frigidly, "but your desertion of your post only
gives me double reason for remaining at mine."

She turned and went regally away towards her own apartments. But in
truth her inward spirit was not nearly as determined as her
well-corseted back. That Sophy should actually have resolved to leave
her alone with Cecil filled her with dismay. She had not realised, until
about to lose it, the admirable "buffer" between her and the full
consequences of Cecil's "illness," that Sophy's presence had provided.
Lady Wychcote had, to a marked degree, your healthy egoist's detestation
of sick-rooms. Not only did the mere word "morphinomaniac" fill her with
dread, but it roused in her the born Conservative's resentment against
anything in the least _outre_ or eccentric. It was Sophy who had
watched, pleaded, interviewed doctors, read aloud, endured abuse, lain
awake at night. The body of Sophy's vigorous young health had stood
between her and that great, drug-poisoned body of her son.

What if...? Yes, to this point had Lady Wychcote been brought by the
realisation of her daughter-in-law's imminent departure. What if, after
all, the doctors were right? If, for his own