did not himself know, that just
because he was better he, paradoxically, was worse. Thoughts and
responsibilities had begun to trouble him again.

"Should you mind very much," he asked suddenly, "if I worked off my
nervousness by singing? I have kept still, so as not to worry you,
exactly as long as I can."

"Certainly," she said, "go ahead. I never knew you were a singer. What
are you going to sing?"

She waited with a certain curiosity.

He began chanting. "B, a, ba; B, e, be--babe! B, i, bi--babebi! B, o,
bo--babebibo! B, u, bu--babebibobu!" Then he went on to the letter C,
"C, a, ca! C, e, ce--cace! C, i, ci--caceci!" and to D, and so on, one
after the other, through all the consonants in the alphabet.

"The queerest rigmarole you ever heard!" Aurora called that simple
Italian spelling-exercise for little beginners. It might have been funny
to hear him, only it was disquieting, he did it so earnestly and so
obstinately kept it up.

When he had finished, Aurora held a sedative powder all nicely wrapped
in a wet wafer ready for him. He knew what it was and gratefully gulped
it, composing himself after it to wait in patience and self-control for
its operation. Aurora, reposing on the magic of drugs like a witch on
the power of incantations, watched for the drooping of his eyelids and
relaxing of his frown.

He had lain still for so long that she was congratulating herself upon
the result thus easily obtained, when he opened his eyes, twice as
wide-awake as before, and began to talk, as if really the object of an
opiate were not to stupefy a man, but to rouse him fully. Under its
influence he was almost garrulous. His vivacity partook of delirium. All
that passed through his mind pressed forward indiscriminately into
utterance, as if the sentinels placed on guard over his thoughts had
been taking an hour off.

Aurora heard him in wonder and perplexity. He was not incoherent, he was
not extravagant. He was merely talkative, expansive, and this in his
case was obviously pathological. She wondered also to see how handsome
he could look, with his eyes alight; his cheek-bones burning, pink as
paint; his hair, grown long, lying in dark locks over a luminous
forehead.

She tried to think of something that would abate all this. She was
searching her nurse's memory for some further sedative by which to
counteract a first one gone wrong, when the thread of her medical
meditation snapped, her attention fastened upon wh