it that it has ceased to be shocking and become
interesting. What I am suffering from is called _paraplegia_; that's
when the lower half of the body is affected; it comes from injury or
disease of the spinal cord. The paralysis begins at the point in the
vertebral column where the injury was received. But it tends to spread
upward. If it gets as far as certain nerves upon which the movements of
the diaphragm depend, then you die. I wonder whether that will be my
case?"

Mrs. Travis kept her eyes on the girl during this singular little
lecture; she felt the fascination which is exercised by strange mental
phenomena.

"Do you know Italy?" Madeline asked, with sudden transition.

"I have travelled through it, like other tourists."

"You went to Naples?"

"Yes."

"If I close my eyes, how well I can see Naples! Now I am walking
through the Villa Nazionale. I come out into the Largo Vittoria, where
the palm-trees are--do you remember? Now I might go into the
Chiatamone, between the high houses; but instead of that I'll turn down
into Via Caracciolo and go along by the sea, till I'm opposite the
Castel dell' Ovo. Now I'm turning the corner and coming on to Santa
Lucia, where there are stalls with shells and ices and fish. I can
smell the Santa Lucia. And to think that I shall never see it again,
never again.--Don't stay any longer now, Mrs. Travis. I can't talk any
more. Thank you for being so kind."

In a week's time it had become a regular thing for Mrs. Travis to spend
an hour or two daily with Madeline. Their conversation was suitable
enough to a sick-chamber, yet strangely unlike what is wont to pass in
such places. On Madeline's side it was thoroughly morbid; on that of
her visitor, a curious mixture of unhealthy speculation and pure
feeling. Mrs. Travis was at first surprised that the suffering girl
never seemed to think of ordinary religion as a solace. She herself had
no fixity of faith; her mind played constantly with creeds of negation;
but she felt it as an unnatural thing for one of Madeline's age to
profess herself wholly without guidance on so dark a journey. And
presently she began to doubt whether the profession were genuine. The
characteristic of the family was pretence and posing; Mrs. Denyer and
Barbara illustrated that every time they spoke. Not impossibly Madeline
did but declare the same tendency in her rambling and quasi-philosophic
talk. She was fond of warning Mrs. Travis against attributing