titude.
Two people who love each other very much expect everything because they
are always ready to give everything, not in return or by way of any
exchange, but as if the two were one in giving and taking. A man cannot
be grateful to himself. But Marcello had never felt that dear illusion
with Regina, because there had been no real companionship; and so he had
always been grateful to her, and now that she was perhaps dying, he was
possessed by the horribly painful certainty that he could never repay
her what he owed, and that this debt of honour must remain unpaid for
ever, if she died. There was much more than that in what he felt, of
course, for there was his very real affection, tormented by the
foreboding of the coming wrench, and there was the profound sympathy of
a very kind man for a suffering woman. But all that together was not
love like hers for him; it was not love at all.

Kalmon waited, and smoked a little, reflecting on these things, which
he understood tolerably well. The quiet man of science had watched
Marcello thoughtfully, and could not help asking himself what look there
would be in his own eyes, if Maddalena dell' Armi were dying and he were
standing by her bedside. It would not be Marcello's look.

A closed cab stopped before the entrance, and almost before he could
throw away his cigarette, the Contessa and Aurora were standing beside
him on the pavement.

"She is very weak," he said, "but she will not be delirious again for
some time--if at all."

Neither of the ladies spoke, and they followed him in silence up the
ill-lighted staircase.

"That is where I live," he said, as he passed his own door on the second
landing. "Marcello is camping there. He is probably asleep now."

"Asleep!" It was Aurora that uttered the single word, in a puzzled tone.

"He did not go to bed last night," Kalmon explained, going on.

"Oh!" Again the Professor was struck by the young girl's tone.

They reached the third landing, and Kalmon pushed the door, which he had
left ajar; he shut it when they had all entered, and he ushered the
mother and daughter into the small sitting-room. There they waited a
moment while he went to tell Regina that Aurora had come.

The young girl dropped her cloak upon a chair and stood waiting, her
eyes fixed on the door. She was a little pale, not knowing what was to
come, yet feeling somehow that it was to make a great difference to her
ever afterwards. She glanced at her moth