t try to talk; it makes you cough. I just
wanted to know how you were. It would be funny, now don't you think so
yourself, if, such friends as we've been, I should stop caring anything
about you because you were cross the other day? I had to come and see if
there wasn't something we could do for you."

The attempt to speak choked him again; he had to lift himself finally
quite up from his pillow to get breath. Quicker than Giovanna, Aurora
snatched up a gray shawl from a chair to put over his shoulders. The
room felt to her stagnantly cold. He stopped her hand in the act of
folding him in, and she knew that it was not the Gerald of last time,
this one who, with an afflictive little moan, clasped and pressed her
hand.

She hushed him, every time he tried to speak, until his breathing had
quieted down, when he came out despite her forbidding with a ragged,
interrupted, but obstinate eagerness:

"How can I ever thank you enough for coming, dear, dear Aurora? I have
lived in one prolonged nightmare ever since I saw you, knowing I had
behaved like a blackguard, and fearing I should never have a chance to
beg your pardon. I thought I should never see you again. And here you
are, so generous, so kind!"

"Hush, Gerald! Don't make anything of it. Of course I came. Keep quiet
now; you mustn't try to talk."

"Dearest woman," he insisted, with his voice full of tears, "I don't
even know what I said to you, but I know that the whole thing was
atrocious. You standing there like a big angel, with your innocent arms
full of flowers, and I barking at you like a cur!"

"Nothing of the sort. You were sick. Who lays up anything against a sick
man?"

"Excuse it in me like this, Aurora, if you can: that having such regard
for you, I had pride before you and could not endure that you should see
me when I felt myself to be a disgusting object. So, mortified to the
point of torture, I lost my temper,--I've got that bad habit, you
know,--and insanely railed to keep you off."

"And didn't succeed. Come, come; what nonsense all this is! Put it out
of your mind and think of nothing but getting well. Now you--"

"It is not nearly so important that I should get well," he testily
persisted, "as that I should ask your forgiveness. It has been weighing
upon me and burning like bedclothes of hot iron, the horror of having so
meanly and ungratefully offended you."

"Why should you feel so bad about it as long as I don't? Put it all out
of you