APTER XXIII

THE USES OF DELIRIUM

"Don't you think I might get up and sit by the window and look at the
sea, Carey?"

Miss Carew hesitated, and then summoned the nurse.

"Miss Dexter was to have one whole day in bed after the journey."

The nurse, looking into Molly's eager eyes, compromised for one half
hour, in which Miss Dexter might lie on the sofa in a fur cloak.

It was a big sofa befitting the largest bedroom in the hotel, and Molly
lay back on its cushions with the peculiar physical satisfaction of
weakness, resting after very slight efforts. Yesterday she had been too
exhausted for enjoyment, but this afternoon her sensations were
delightful.

The short afternoon light was ruddy on the glorious brown sails of the
fishing-boats, and drew out all their magnificent contrast to the blue
water. But the sun still sparkled garishly on the crest of the waves,
and the milder glow of the sunset had not begun.

Weakness was sheltered and at rest within, while without was the immense
movement of wind and water, and the passing smile of the sun on the
great, unshackled forces of winter. Molly's rest was like a child's
security in the arms of a kindly giant. Her mind had been absorbed by
illness--an illness that had had her completely in grip, the first
serious illness she had ever known. There had been a struggle in the
depths of her life's forces such as she had never imagined; but now life
had conquered, and she was at rest. In that time there had been awful
delirium: horrible things, guilty and hideous, had clung about her, all
round her. One wicked presence especially had taken a strange form, a
face without a body, and yet it had hands--it must have had hands
because the horror of it was that it constantly opened the doors of the
different cupboards, but most often the door of the big wardrobe, and
looked out, and that although Molly had had the wardrobe locked and the
key put under her pillow. And this face was very like Molly's, and the
question she had to settle was whether this face was her mother's or her
own. At times she reasoned--and the logical process was so deadly
tiring--that it must be her mother, for she could not be Molly herself
being so unkind to herself; whereas, if the face had had any pity for
her it might have been herself looking at herself. But was that not
nonsense? There was surely a touch of hysteria in that. Did the face
really come out of her own brain? And if so, from what part