king anesthesia from painful thoughts; she was
too proud to seek it for a painful body. She tried hard, too, to keep
shining Kraill's conception of her courage; she did not realize that he
would never know, however much she gave way: always, for her, he lived
just on the threshold of her consciousness.

One day when the doctor was sitting beside her and she had got out of a
maze of pain into a buoyant sea of bodily unconsciousness, she talked to
him about his letter in which he had grieved at his inadequacy. Then
she told him about Louis, and about Kraill, for she thought it might
encourage him to know how the miracle of healing had come about.

"He wrote to me this morning, doctor," she said. "Will you feel under my
pillow and get the letter? I know he wouldn't mind your reading it."

The doctor unfolded the thick bundle of pages and read--and as he read
he saw that the words were all blurred by tears, and guessed that they
were certainly not tears shed by the exuberant young man who had written
the letter.

"Three cheers, old girl. The week of torture is past! I know I got
through. I simply sailed through. My brain is a fifty times better
machine than it was seven years ago. And they're accommodating at these
Scotch medical schools. I told 'em I'd got through part of my Final in
London before the bust-up came, and the Dean sent for me to-day and said
it seemed a pity for me to slog at the donkey-work again, when I knew
it. So we talked it over, and he says I ought to do the Final next year.
And then, Marcella, look out! I've told you I've laid down my challenge
to sickness! I'll have it whacked before I die. I can't see why anyone
should die except of senile decay or accident--and those we'll eliminate
in time! I feel that there's only a dyke of matchboarding between me and
the ocean of knowledge. One day it's going to break, and I'll be flooded
with it. It's a most uncanny feeling, old girl. One of the chaps here--a
rather mad American--says that there are people who've broken that dyke
down--Shakespeare, for instance. (But if I broke it down, I wouldn't be
such a footler as to write plays and poems, would you?) Corlyon--that's
the mad American--is the son of a big psychologist at Harvard; he gave
me some light on Kraill's remark about dreams that day. He says they're
being used a lot by some German and American alienists in curing all
sorts of neuroses. (By the way, old girl, next time you write, tell me
if you u