r mind, just as I do out of mine. There, it's all right. Now keep
still except to answer my questions. You've had the doctor?"

"Yes, dear."

"What's he giving you?"

"You can see--there on the stand--those bottles."

"And hot things on your chest?"

"Yes; _semedilino_. I don't know what you call it in English."

"Flaxseed, I guess. How can poor old Giovanna do everything for you?"

"I don't know," he answered vaguely. "She does."

Perceiving that by a reaction from his excitement he was suddenly
fatigued to the point of no longer being able to speak at all or even
keep his eyes open, she asked nothing more, but with a practised hand
straightened his bolster, smoothed his pillow and drew the covers evenly
and snugly up to his chin.

"Don't you be afraid," he heard her say above him, as it seemed to him a
long time after, at the same moment that he felt her give his shoulder a
little squeeze to impress her saying: "I won't let anything happen to
you."

* * * * *

He entered a state which was neither quite sleep nor quite waking. He
was not dreaming, yet the world within his eyelids was peopled with
creatures and varied by incidents departing from the known and foreseen.
Something malevolent pertained to the personalities, something
disquieting to the actions; suffering and oppression resulted from his
inability to get away from them. They came and went, one scene melted
into another, sometimes beautiful, sometimes repulsive, a sickly
disagreeableness being common to all, and the fatigue involved with
watching the spectacle of them weighing like a physical burden.

But yet beneath the unrest of fever dreams there was in Gerald, after
Aurora's visit, as if a substratum of quiet and content. As a good
Catholic, having confessed and received absolution, would be less
troubled by either his symptoms or any visions that might come of Satan
and his imps, so Gerald, with the weight of his sins of brutality and
ingratitude lifted off him, could feel almost passive with regard to the
rest.

He had moments through the night of recognizing the deceptiveness of his
senses. He knew, for instance, that the solemn clerical gentleman in a
long black coat and tall hat whom he saw most tiresomely coming toward
him down the street every time he opened his eyes was only a medicine
bottle full of dark fluid, outlined against the dim candle-shine. And he
knew that the tower of ice, sol