d now and then to stop and rest with swimming head. Then at once
would return, like the demon in fair disguise tempting some hermit of
the desert, the thought, "What is Aurora doing? If Aurora knew I was
ill, she would come." And the imagination of her coming would shed a
feverish gladness all along those petulant, ill-treated, starved nerves.
"What have I to do with Aurora, or Aurora with me?" he would ask,
furiously, the incongruity of what had happened to him calling forth
sometimes a desperate laugh. But Nature laughs at man's ideas of
congruity; remembering that, he could only hold his hands against his
eyes and try to press the image of Aurora out of existence.

Gerald, however, was much stronger than his nerves. He could see his own
case, even with a pulse at ninety, as well as another man's. And his
will was firmer than might have been thought. He knew something of a
human man's constitution, how it can circumvent a man, or how a man,
well on his guard, can circumvent it. He formed the project of
interrupting his visits to the Hermitage.

After this resolution he regarded those returns of earth-born desire for
Aurora's balmy touch and tranquilizing neighborhood as a man who had
taken an heroic and sure remedy against ague might regard the
fluctuations in his body of heat and cold continuing still for a little
while. As to how Aurora would take his defection, all should be managed
with so much art and politeness that the most sensitive could not be
hurt. By the time the new important work which he would make his excuse
was accomplished, his cure would have been accomplished as well.

Meanwhile, each time the door-bell rang--it was not often,
certainly--his attention was taken from his book, and he listened. And
so, on Mlle. Durand's French afternoon, Gerald, having heard the bell,
was listening, but with his face to the fire and his back to the door.
When Giovanna knocked, "Forward!" he said, without turning. The door
opened.

"_C'e quella signora._" "There is that lady," dubiously announced
Giovanna.

Gerald turned, and beheld that lady filling the doorway.

Then it was as if a bright trumpet-blast of reality, breaking upon a bad
dream, dispelled it; or as if a fresh wind, blowing over stagnant water,
swept away the cloud of noxious gnats. All he had latterly been thinking
and feeling seemed to Gerald insane, sickly, the instant he beheld
Aurora's comradely smile. He was ashamed; he found himself on the ve