acceptance pure of every shadow,
either of obligation, or reserve, or regret.

* * * * *

Since the doctor said it would do the invalid no harm to admit a visitor
or two, Aurora wrote to Mrs. Foss. She came at once with Leslie. Both on
the occasion of this call were perfect, in tact, in warmth, in
friendship. And yet with them, and the sense of the World and the
World's point of view which they inevitably brought, change entered the
house.

The vacuous, almost happy languor of the sick was replaced in Gerald by
an irritable gloominess, decently repressed, but unconcealable.

"There's no mistake; you're getting well," remarked Aurora, when the
unrest of a mind troubled by many things expressed itself in indignation
against innocent inanimate objects, a drop of candle wax for burning, an
ivory paper-cutter for snapping in his impatient hand. "You're getting
well. I guess I can go home and feel easy about you."

And sooner than Giovanna had dared to hope when most fervently she
invoked the Holy Mother, lo! the intruders, mistress and maids, bag and
baggage, had left in their places room and silence. So much sooner than
expected that Giovanna, clasping in her hands an incredible fee, almost
found it in herself to feel regret.

CHAPTER XVI

On their last day together Gerald had asked Aurora to find the key of a
certain desk-drawer and to bring him the miniature strong-box locked in
it. He had taken out one by one, to show her, the little store of
trinkets once belonging to his mother and given her from among them the
one he thought most charming, an old silver cross studded with amethysts
and pearls.

Her own house, when she reentered it, looked faintly unfamiliar, as if
she had been away much longer than she had by actual count. But her big
soft bed looked good to her, she told Estelle, after the bed of granite
framed in iron she had lately occupied.

She was in high good spirits. Gerald out of the woods, the amethyst
cross, Estelle and her beautiful commodious house returned to, vistas
ahead of good times and heart satisfactions, a sense of success and the
richness of life--Aurora was in splendid spirits.

Estelle and she slept together on the first night, so as to be able to
buzz until morning, as they had used to do in their young days, when one
of them was allowed to go on a visit to the other and stay overnight.
There ensued a very orgy of talk, a going ov