sake, it would be better to
have Cecil sent to a sanatorium?

XXXI

Sophy gave Tilda and Miller orders to pack, then she sent and asked to
speak with Nurse Harding for a moment. She wished to know whether her
husband could see her, if he were in a sufficiently rational state for
her to talk with him. Anne replied that he had just had his fraction of
morphia, and that it was his best hour in the day.

"Well, Daphne?" he said, rather guiltily, when she entered. She
marvelled that he could call her "Daphne." It was like throwing the
flowers from a sacred grave into the mire. She sat down near him, and
said:

"I've come to tell you that I'm going with Bobby to Italy to-morrow."

He looked blank, not taking it in at first; then he scowled.

"I see. Shuffling off this marital coil with a vengeance, ain't you?"

"I'm going with Bobby because he needs me. But even if he didn't need
me, I should go. I will not sit by and see you destroy yourself."

"Yes. I can imagine that to hear of the process from a distance would be
more agreeable."

"I've tried with all my might to help you. You've only laughed at me. It
amused you to deceive me. I was no help to you. If I did help you in any
way, it was to ruin yourself."

"Strong words, my love. So you consider me a ruin?"

"Almost."

Her lips quivered. She closed them firmly. For his own good she was not
going to let that haggard face move her unduly.

"Mh. I see. Well, though I do not seem to appeal to your compassion, I
trust that I do to your sense of the picturesque. Ruins are supposed to
be romantic. However, a human ruin hasn't the same value in the
landscape as an architectural one. Human ruins are generally put under
ground, not on top of it. I dare say the Cecil Chesney ruin will be thus
disposed of. Shall you return for the ceremony, or have you decided to
live permanently in Italy?"

Sophy looked at him with a sort of impassioned hardness.

"I will come back when you are cured--when you have gone of your own
accord to a place where they can cure you. Until then--I will never come
back."

He looked at her, hiding his real shock under a harsh sarcasm.

"'These be news!'" he exclaimed dryly. "Unlike the leopard, you seem to
have been changing your spots--the spots on the sun of my happiness--the
little freckles on the fair lily of your character."

"I have changed," she said. "You have changed me."

"That's very interesting. Our strongest influence