in the calendar, whose name she could remember,
and crossed herself with automaton-like energy.

She could not, she protested, be expected to nurse such a dangerous
case of fever as this undoubtedly was. There was her son, the adored
of her old age. _Santa Maria_! If he also were stricken!

Emile pushed her on one side. "I'll talk to you presently," he said in
her own dialect. "If you are going into hysterics with fright you'll
catch anything that is catching. If you behave sensibly you won't."

The window was fully open and the green shutters thrown back, and the
fierce sunlight streamed into Arithelli's room, which showed more than
its normal disorder. The tray with the _cafe complet_ was on the floor
where the landlady had left it on her hasty stampede downstairs,
half-a-dozen turquoise rings lay strewn over a little table, where they
had been thrown when they were dragged off, boys' clothes trailed over
the back of one chair, and a blue skirt over another. The only orderly
thing visible was the immaculate row of fine kid boots, long, narrow,
pearl-grey, tan and champagne-coloured.

Arithelli lay on the big bed under the faded canopy. She had wrapped
herself in a thin blue _peignoir_, and her face was half hidden in
tangled hair. The tumbled bed-clothes were pulled to one side and
dragging on the dusty boards. She was quite unconscious of anyone's
presence, and moaned softly in a strangled fashion.

The two men stood without speaking, and watched the writhing, restless
figure. Vardri turned away first with a smothered exclamation. Would
he always be obliged to see her tortured in some way or another? The
Fates were sending him more than any man could bear to look upon.

"What are you going to do?" he said roughly in French, "I can't stand
seeing this!"

Emile showed no signs of surprise at the other's manifest anxiety,
possibly because his own was as deep, though his method of expressing
it was different. He felt helpless, and, being a man, resented the
feeling, so by consequence his always rugged manner became even more
unpleasant than usual.

"Well," he rejoined, "what can you expect in this filthy place? This
street isn't so bad, but of course she has so often been down in those
slums in the Parelelo. The Calle de Pescadores alone is enough to give
anyone a fever. I think Sobrenski has made a point of sending her down
every poisonous street in the place. Ireland's a clean country, you
s