entertained no doubt that with proper
care he would get well. And she was providing the care. Hence a
confidence which she did not allow any of those chilly creepy fears
which come at about three o'clock in the morning to undermine. She was
so strongly resolved to get him well, and felt so capable of doing it,
that it would not seem unlikely her very hands in touching him had
virtue and imparted health.

He said very little, even when the exertion of talking had ceased to
make him cough. The fact that talk fatigued him was reinforced by his
old fancy that talk was superfluous. One lived, one looked, one felt....

She was glad he so willingly kept quiet, because as long as he had fever
it was so much the best thing he could do. He did not have to tell her
that he took comfort in having her there, that everything she did for
him was exactly right, that her touch was blessed and had no more
strangeness for him than that of a sister--nay, than his own. She too
understood those wordless things which are shed from one person, like a
radiance, and inhaled by another, like a scent.

In the long silences, she sometimes read a little by the shaded
candle--she had chosen the night watch for her share and let his devoted
old Giovanna wait on her master during the day. But very often she sat
in her easy-chair near the bed doing nothing, just thinking her
thoughts, marveling at the queerness, the surprises of life. Who could
have dreamed that first time she entered this big brick-floored,
white-washed room, and nearly cried because she found it so dreary, that
she would come to feel at home in it; that by her doing the brown
earthenware stove in the corner, cold since Mrs. Fane's day, would again
glow and purr; that over and over she would watch the row of flower-pots
out on the terrace, with the stiff straw-colored remains in them of last
year's carnations, grow slowly visible in the dawn; that from their
pastel portrait the eyes of the mother would watch her placing
compresses on the brow of the son!

* * * * *

[Illustration: Aurora's eyes, fixed and starry, rested upon the little
flame]

Before going for her rest, she always waited to see the doctor, who made
an early visit. After they had reissued together from the sickroom, he
was interviewed by her with the help of an interpreter, Clotilde, who
was in and out of the house during all that period, making herself
useful. Estelle i