. no way that I can serve you...."

"Amaldi ... Amaldi ..." she murmured. She caught his hand in both her
own. "Oh, forgive me...." she said; "dear, dear Amaldi, forgive me!"

He bent and kissed the hands that clasped his.

"There is nothing to forgive," he answered.

It seemed to Sophy afterwards, when she came more to her usual self out
there on the glee of blue waters, far from Le Vigne, that they two had
been like actors moving through some pantomime, during those last
moments. In silence they had walked together to the darsena; in silence
he had assisted her into the launch; in silence she had sat watching
Luigi start the engine. No other farewell had passed between them. In
the moments following that disastrous, tragic crisis, all convention had
withered. They had not even a subconscious sense of the mimic civilities
due to Luigi's presence. And over Sophy stole that numbness which comes
as anodyne to deep natures which have been called on to endure too many
and too violent shocks within a short period. For a few moments, there
face to face with Amaldi, she had suffered intensely. Now that was past.
She felt quiet, and oddly cramped, as though crouching in a little
capsule of stillness at the cyclone's heart....

* * * * *

They could not leave on Wednesday as they had expected. Bobby's fever
had culminated in a sharp attack of jaundice--the result of fright,
Camenis told her. But the little fellow recovered rapidly. Only his
nerves seemed still taut from the shock. He would shriek out wildly in
his sleep, and no one but his mother could soothe these paroxysms of
terror. As he grew stronger, she began to pursue with him the course of
which she had hinted to Chesney.

"My darling," she would coax, "dada was only showing you how strong he
was ... how safe he could hold you. Why, dada wouldn't hurt his little
boy for all the world! He's so strong, so strong! He _couldn't_ let
Bobby fall. Don't you see, sweetheart?"

Thus she would coax him by the hour. At last it seemed to "seep" into
his little brain. "Dada so st'ong," he would repeat. "Dada show Bobby
'ow st'ong! Good dada ... not dwop Bobby!"

At last Sophy ventured to ask one day:

"Don't you want to see poor dada? He's so afraid his little boy doesn't
love him any more?"

But Bobby began to tremble.

"Dada _so_ st'ong...." he pleaded, clinging hard to Sophy's breast. At
last, however, he consented to let his father co