o print it,' said his
mother. 'I'm not a bit prejudiced, I'm sure, and I think it's one of the
best tales I ever read in all my life.'

'Do you really?' Henry smiled, his natural modesty fighting against a
sure conviction that his mother was right.

Aunt Annie said little, but she had copied out _Love in Babylon_ in her
fine, fair Italian hand, keeping pace day by day with Henry's
extraordinary speed, and now she accomplished the transcription of the
last pages.

The time arrived for Henry to be restored to a waiting world. He was
cured, well, hearty, vigorous, radiant. But he was still infected,
isolate, one might almost say _taboo_; and everything in his room, and
everything that everyone had worn while in the room, was in the same
condition. Therefore the solemn process, rite, and ceremony of
purification had to be performed. It began upon the last day of the old
year at dusk.

Aunt Annie made a quantity of paste in a basin; Mrs. Knight bought a
penny brush; and Henry cut up a copy of the _Telegraph_ into long strips
about two inches wide. The sides and sash of the window were then
hermetically sealed; the register of the fireplace was closed, and
sealed also. Clothes were spread out in open order, the bed stripped,
rugs hung over chairs.

'Henry's book?' Mrs. Knight demanded.

'Of course it must be disinfected with the other things,' said Aunt
Annie.

'Yes, of course,' Henry agreed.

'And it will be safer to lay the sheets separately on the floor,' Aunt
Annie continued.

There were fifty-nine sheets of Aunt Annie's fine, finicking caligraphy,
and the scribe and her nephew went down on their knees, and laid them in
numerical sequence on the floor. The initiatory '_Babylon_' found itself
in the corner between the window and the fireplace beneath the
dressing-table, and the final '_Babylon_' was hidden in gloomy retreats
under the bed.

Then Sarah entered, bearing sulphur in a shallow pan, and a box of
matches. The paste and the paste-brush and the remnants of the
_Telegraph_ were carried out into the passage. Henry carefully ignited
the sulphur, and, captain of the ship, was the last to leave. As they
closed the door the odour of burning, microbe-destroying sulphur
impinged on their nostrils. Henry sealed the door on the outside with
'London Day by Day,' 'Sales by Auction,' and a leading article or so.

'There!' said Henry.

All was over.

At intervals throughout the night he thought of the sanati