I want to be--now.... Please get me a glass of warm milk."

He obeyed. From her bag she produced a powder and, at her word, Bedient
held forth his tongue....

"And now I want you to drink the milk--all of it. You put down
asterisks in the place of breakfast--quite as usual. I considered my
self-control remarkable at the time."

He drank the milk slowly, as she had ordered.... The moments were
sensational. Picture after picture passed through the light of his
mind, as from other lives, and the loves of many women; and then the
whole story that he had told Beth Truba rushed by--the mother's hand
and the little boy--the city, the parks, the ships--the hours upon her
arm, when she had made him over anew to face the long voyage alone--the
questions he had asked--the last port with her, which he had never been
able to find--the last ride with Beth--until he was shaken with the
rush of visions. Everything that he was, and hoped to be, everything
that he had thought of beauty and truth and giving, every aspiration
and every inspiration--seemed gifts of women! His very life and all
that had come to him--gifts of women. And all their loving, wistful,
smiling faces were there--among the Dream Ranges.... Now this one was
speaking:

... "I want you to show me where I am to rest and where you are to
rest."

Up they went together and softly.... He led her into his own room, but
she saw his things and would not.

"This is where you belong," she whispered. "You will rest better
here.... Please don't dispute.... But let me be near, if you will."

He showed her a little room that joined his own. Falk had made it
ready.

"Just the place for me.... And after you have lain down, please whistle
softly. I shall come in and read to you until you are asleep."

"It's like a fairy story already," he said.

* * * * *

He closed his eyes, and the pictures took up their swift passing again.
It was not the drug, but the new thing in this life of his--a woman's
ministering.... She came in presently, her hair loosened. She wore one
of his silk night-coats, the sleeves rolled up; and very little, she
looked, in the heelless straw sandals. She was pale. He saw the
throbbing artery in her white throat. The polished ebon floor had a
startling effect upon her black hair.

"You are like Rossetti's _Pomegranate_ picture," he said, and added
with a strange smile, "Do you know there is something true about
you--arr