itary amid snows, lighthouse or tower of
defense on some arctic coast, was nothing but a glass of water. And when
it seemed to him, late, late in the night, that Aurora was in the room,
he knew off and on that it was Giovanna, who through one of those
metamorphoses common in fever had taken the likeness of Aurora. She
lifted him to make him drink, and supported him while she held the glass
to his lips, then laid him easily back. The delusions of fever had the
sweet and foolish impossibility of fairy-stories: Aurora, as if it were
the most natural thing in the world, placing upon his stiff and
lacerated breast balsamic bandages of assuaging and beneficient
warmth!...

The night was full of torrid heat and fiery light, in which everything
looked unnatural, shifting, uncertain, but daylight, when it finally
came, was of a crude coldness; under it everything returned to be
itself, meager and stationary, and he knew that it was no
phantasmagorical Aurora making preparations to wash his face.

He spoke no word to signify either pleasure or displeasure. He let it
be, like a destiny too strong to withstand. With this acceptance there
took place in him, body and spirit, a relaxing, as when supporting arms
are felt by one who had been fearing a fall.

In his not very clear-headed reflections upon himself and his state, he
had passed into a different category of men, where what he did,
particularly as regarded worldly proprieties, had little importance,
because, ill as he felt, there seemed to him such a strong probability
of his actions having no result. If, on the other hand, he could manage
to pull through--and he found he cared to do this, cared so much more
than he had supposed he ever could care, on such desperate days as those
which had sometimes seen him re-examining his revolver--if he should
recover, the gladness of his good fortune would outweigh any
inconvenience created by his weakness now. Life is, and should be,
dearer to man than anything else, except honor. He found it difficult to
separate the idea of honor from life, and make it oppose letting this
robust guardian angel fulfil her promise not to "let anything happen to
him."

* * * * *

Gerald had too often heard those well-meaning lies which friends and
nurses tell the sick, to place faith altogether in Aurora's cheerful
asseverations from day to day that he was getting better.

Yet Aurora was not feigning. She