ction at the dinner-table a short time before, did not occur to me then,
but if it had, there were the three glasses--he would not bring _three_;
nor would Adelaide; nor, as I saw it, would Carmel.

Chaos! However one looked at it, chaos! Only one fact was clear--that
Carmel knew the whole story and might communicate the same, if ever her
brain cleared and she could be brought to reveal the mysteries of that
hour. Did I desire such a consummation? Only God, who penetrates more
deeply than ourselves into the hidden regions of the human heart, could
tell. I only know that the fear and expectation of such an outcome made
my anguish for the next two weeks.

Would she live? Would she die? The question was on every tongue. The
crisis of her disease was approaching, and the next twenty-four hours
would decide her fate, and in consequence, my own, if not her brother
Arthur's. As I contemplated the suspense of these twenty-four hours, I
revolted madly for the first time against the restrictions of my prison.
I wanted air, movement, the rush into danger, which my horse or my
automobile might afford. Anything which would drag my thoughts from that
sick room, and the anticipated stir of that lovely form into conscious
life and suffering. Her eyes--I could see her eyes wakening upon the
world again, after her long wandering in the unknown and unimaginable
intricacies of ungoverned thought and delirious suggestion. Eyes of
violet colour and infinite expression; eyes which would make a man's joy
if they smiled on him in innocence; but which, as I well knew, had burned
more than once, in her short but strenuous life, with fiery passions; and
might, at the instant of waking, betray this same unholy gleam under the
curious gaze of the unsympathetic ones set in watch over her.

What would her first word be? Whither would her first thought fly? To
Adelaide or to me; to Arthur or to her own frightened and appalled self?
I maddened as I dwelt upon the possibilities of this moment. I envied
Arthur; I envied the attendants; I envied even the servants in the house.
They would all know sooner than I. Carmel! Carmel!

Sending for Clifton, I begged him to keep himself in communication with
the house, or with the authorities. He promised to do what he could;
then, perceiving the state I was in, he related all he knew of present
conditions. No one was allowed in the sick room but the nurse and the
doctor. Even Arthur was denied admission, and was