most afraid for him; not afraid now that he
would waste himself again, but afraid that he would never touch the
mountain-tops at which he was aiming.

"Yes, we'll go home," she said dreamily. "And I'll take you on
Lashnagar--and we'll see them all again. I'll ask Uncle to give us the
money to take us home. This wretched illness will take all we have."

"Don't you worry about your Uncle's money," he said grimly. "I'll see to
that! Marcella, there's nothing I can't do now. If only I hadn't
monkeyed about at the hospital, probably I'd have had the knowledge to
save you all this now."

"Why, how silly!" she laughed. "If you hadn't monkeyed about at the
hospital we should never have met!"

The next day she went into hospital: as the anesthetic broke over her in
delicious warm waves she was frantically afraid that she was going to
die; it seemed to her that these calm, business-like surgeons and nurses
only treated her as one of millions, not realizing that she was Marcella
Lashcairn, immensely important to Louis and Andrew. She began to feel
that it would be much better if she did not have an anesthetic at all,
and superintended the whole business herself intelligently. It seemed
wrong that she should have no hand in a thing of such profound
importance. Then her will relaxed a little and she was horribly afraid
that she would feel sharp knives through the anesthetic. A blinding
flash of realization abased her utterly. Just on the borders of
unconsciousness she saw Kraill looking at her with his beautiful eyes
clouded with disappointment.

"He knows I'm afraid of being cut up--and he knows I'm afraid of dying
I--Naturally he knows--he lives in my imagination!--and he wanted my
courage--But I'm not really frightened, you know. Can't you see I'm
not?"

It became immediately necessary to explain this to Kraill. She tried to
push the mask away. A very steady, pleasant voice was saying "breathe
deeply," and she realized that she had once more been taken up by things
much stronger and wiser than herself: quite conceivably they might make
a mess of her, hurt her and even kill her. But they were doing wisely;
and anyway, she herself could do nothing more--buoyant warm waves took
her up and carried her right away from caring.

When she wakened again all fear had gone; she was conscious of a burning
corkscrew boring into her body somewhere, but she was too lazy to
localize it. A long, long time after that she saw sunshine and s