ry uncertain and
rather small. The street door, when she had pulled the bell-handle, had
unlatched with a click, but no voice had called down, and when she
reached the top landing the door in front of her stood forbiddingly
closed. She waited for some minutes, wondering whether she were doing
right. Suppose Gerald were enough better to be up again and, Giovanna
being out, should himself come to open the door. How would she feel,
caught slinking back, after she had been requested loudly and roundly to
stay away?

Well, set aside how she felt, the object of her coming would have been
reached, wouldn't it? She would know that he was better. She rang and
listened.

Certain, as soon as she heard them, whose footsteps were on the other
side of the door, she held in readiness her Italian. She counted on
understanding Giovanna's answer to her question, for she had, as she
boasted, "quite a vocabulary." But much more than to this she trusted to
the talent which Italians have for making their meaning clear through
pantomime and facial expression.

As soon, in fact, as Giovanna opened the door, and before the woman had
said a word in reply to "_Come sta Signor Fane?_" Aurora had
understood.

Giovanna's eyes, stained with recent weeping, looked up at the visitor
without severity or aversion, seeking for sympathy; the unintelligible
account she gave of her master's condition was broken up with sighs.

Aurora felt her heart turn cold, and such agitation seize her as made
her reckless of all but one thing.

"I shall have to see for myself," she thought.

With the haste of fear, she flew before Giovanna down the long hallway,
around the dark corner, to the door of Gerald's room. It was half open.
Checking herself on the threshold, she thrust in her head.

He was so lying in his bed that beyond the outlined shape under the
covers she could see of him only a dark spot of hair. And she felt she
must see his face, whether asleep or awake, to get some idea.... She
tiptoed in with the least possible noise. At once, without turning, he
asked something in Italian, and speaking forced him to cough; and after
he had finished coughing, Aurora, who was near, could hear his breathing
rustle within him like wind among dead leaves.

Giovanna had gone to the head of his bed and whispered a communication.
Upon which he twisted sharply around, and Aurora, moved by an
overpowering impulse, rushed to his side.

"Hush!" she said at once. "Don'