eat sigh of relief, and gave himself
up entirely to thoughts of Maria. But there were too many people about
him, they were too many, too rough, and too noisy. At Chivasso, feeling
he could no longer bear their chattering and laughter, he changed into
an empty second-class carriage, where he began to talk aloud, his eyes
fixed on the opposite seat.

Good God! why had they not added another word to the telegram? Just one
word more! At least the name of the illness.

A terrible name flashed across his brain: Croup! He gasped with horror,
and threw out his arms against this phantom, his muscles suddenly
stiffening, then, letting his arms sink once more, he heaved a sigh so
deep that it seemed to expel the very soul, even life itself, from his
breast. It must indeed be a sudden illness, or Luisa would have written.
Another name flashed across his mind. Brain-fever! He himself had been
at the point of death with brain-fever when a child. Oh God! oh God! It
must be that! God Himself had sent this thought to him. He was shaken
by tearless sobbing. Maria, his treasure, his love, his joy! Yes,
indeed it must be that. He could see her gasping, flushed, watched over
by her mother and the doctor. In a moment he pictured to himself long
hours spent by her bedside, long hours of anguish, then he pictured the
birth of hope, heard the first whisper of that sweet voice:

"Papa! my papa!"

He started to his feet, clasping and wringing his hands in a mute
impulse of prayer. Presently he sank back into his seat again,
exhausted, and turned unseeing eyes upon the flying landscape, vaguely
conscious of some connection between the misty Alps looming motionless
there against the northern horizon and the thought that dominated him,
looming motionless and torpid within his soul. From time to time the
jolting of the train would rouse him from his stupor, suggesting the
idea of a painful race, stimulating his heart to rush, to beat thus
also. Sometimes he would close his eyes, the better to picture his
arrival at home. Images would at once rise from his heart to his
eyelids, but they were always changing, continually moving, and he could
not hold them for more than a second. Now it was Luisa hastening towards
him on the stairs; now the uncle holding out his arms to him from the
door of the hall; now Dr. Aliprandi who was opening the door of the
alcove-room to him, and saying: "She is better, she is better!" Now in
the darkened room, filled with