down the rising nausea. She drew a long
breath first; then she delivered a little speech which she had half
rehearsed upstairs. As she spoke he looked at her again.

"Laurie," she said, "I want you to listen to me very carefully, and to
trust me. I know what is the matter with you; and I think you know
too. You can't fight--fight him by yourself.... Just hold on as
tightly as you can to me--with your mind, I mean. Do you understand?"

For a moment she thought that he perceived something of what she
meant: he looked at her so earnestly with those odd questioning eyes.
Then he jerked ever so slightly, as if some string had been suddenly
pulled, and glanced down again at the fire....

"I ... I ... I'm all right," he said.

It was horrible to see that motionlessness of body. He sat there as he
had probably sat since entering the room. His eyes moved, but scarcely
his head; and his hands hung down helplessly.

"Laurie ... attend ..." she began again. Then she broke off.

"Have you prayed, Laurie...? Do you understand what has happened to
you? You aren't really ill--at least, not exactly, but--"

Again those eyes lifted, looked, and dropped again.

It was piteous. For the instant the sense of nausea vanished,
swallowed up in emotion. Why ... why, he was there all the
while--Laurie ... dear Laurie....

With one motion, swift and impetuous, she had thrown herself forward
on to her knees, and clasped at the hanging hands.

"Laurie! Laurie!" she cried. "You haven't prayed ... you've been
playing, and the machinery has caught you. But it isn't too late! Oh,
God! it's not too late. Pray with me! Say the Our Father...."

Again slowly the eyes moved round. He had started ever so little at
her rush, and the seizing of his hands; and now she felt those hands
moving weakly in her own, as of a sleeping child who tries to detach
himself from his mother's arms.

"I ... I ... I'm all--"

She grasped his hands more fiercely, staring straight up into those
strange piteous eyes that revealed so little, except formless
commotion and uneasiness.

"Say the Our Father with me. 'Our Father--'"

Then his hands tore back, with a movement as fierce as her own, and
the eyes blazed with an unreal light. She still clung to his wrists,
looking up, struck with a paralysis of fear at the change, and the
furious hostility that flamed up in the face. The lips writhed back,
half snarling, half smiling....

"Let go! let go!" he hissed at her