pine was to
prevent nausea. How cursedly dry it made one's mouth! That was the
drawback to atropine. But it was better than nausea. And still he sat
there fingering the prescription--something holding him back--something
more imperious than reason. His reasons appeared all excellent and
logical to himself; yet this something refused them--said: "Not so....
Not so"--with the iteration of steady clockwork. Also, as often happens
when one is sure of relief, that hot drilling in his leg had ceased
completely. Without the excuse of that anguish, it seemed in a flash
monstrous, even to him, that he should be sitting there in the lovely
Italian sunshine before Lavatelli's, after all the horrors of the past
months and years, deliberately contemplating purchasing and taking a
dose of morphia. He slipped the prescription suddenly back into his
pocketbook and put it away.

"Villa Bianca!" he called sharply to the vetturino.

The man caught up the reins again, again smacked the old bay's quarters
with his whip. They started at a splaying trot towards Ghiffa. But
before they reached the Intra post-office, the fierce pain had again
gripped him. He was ashamed to tell the man to go back to Lavatelli's.
With his stick he tapped John's shoulder.

"What did you say was the name of the other chemist's shop....
Pharmacy.... Whatever-you-call-it...?" he asked.

"_Pharmacia? He?_"

"Yes; the other one."

"Caccia? All right, I go at Caccia."

He turned round and drove to another chemist's, this time in a farther
Piazza. It took about four minutes. Chesney got out and entered the
shop. The keen, medicinal smell of the place brought the past in a gust
upon him. He took the old prescription again from his pocketbook. It was
stamped with the names of various chemists where it had been filled
before.

"I am suffering severely with sciatica," he said, in a casual tone, to
the clerk who took the prescription from him. "I need sleep very badly.
I only want enough morphia for two doses--well, perhaps three would be
better, as the pain might not yield easily."

The clerk said: "_Si, Signore_," and went to consult a senior member of
the firm. He returned and said respectfully:

"I am sorry, Signore. We do not keep _Sulfato di Morphia_ in this form."

Chesney flushed and paled rapidly as he had done in the cab outside.

"Do you mean you refuse to sell me even one or two doses?" he asked
haughtily.

The clerk looked admiringly and a littl