tood to say that there were well-known varieties of this illness.
Rodriguez appeared to think that they were treating the illness with
undue anxiety. His visits were always marked by the same show of
confidence, and in his interviews with Terence he always waved aside
his anxious and minute questions with a kind of flourish which seemed
to indicate that they were all taking it much too seriously. He seemed
curiously unwilling to sit down.

"A high temperature," he said, looking furtively about the room,
and appearing to be more interested in the furniture and in Helen's
embroidery than in anything else. "In this climate you must expect a
high temperature. You need not be alarmed by that. It is the pulse we
go by" (he tapped his own hairy wrist), "and the pulse continues
excellent."

Thereupon he bowed and slipped out. The interview was conducted
laboriously upon both sides in French, and this, together with the
fact that he was optimistic, and that Terence respected the medical
profession from hearsay, made him less critical than he would have been
had he encountered the doctor in any other capacity. Unconsciously
he took Rodriguez' side against Helen, who seemed to have taken an
unreasonable prejudice against him.

When Saturday came it was evident that the hours of the day must be more
strictly organised than they had been. St. John offered his services; he
said that he had nothing to do, and that he might as well spend the
day at the villa if he could be of use. As if they were starting on a
difficult expedition together, they parcelled out their duties between
them, writing out an elaborate scheme of hours upon a large sheet of
paper which was pinned to the drawing-room door. Their distance from
the town, and the difficulty of procuring rare things with unknown
names from the most unexpected places, made it necessary to think very
carefully, and they found it unexpectedly difficult to do the simple
but practical things that were required of them, as if they, being very
tall, were asked to stoop down and arrange minute grains of sand in a
pattern on the ground.

It was St. John's duty to fetch what was needed from the town, so
that Terence would sit all through the long hot hours alone in the
drawing-room, near the open door, listening for any movement upstairs,
or call from Helen. He always forgot to pull down the blinds, so that he
sat in bright sunshine, which worried him without his knowing what was
the caus