I watched him stealthily, this cool,
collected, impersonal young man, to whom even the efficient nurse
was astonishingly respectful, and pure laughter seized me at the
idea of _his_ crying aloud, being as agitated, as passionate, as
fiercely insistent, as he had been in the vision.
I ventured to put a part of the vagary to the acid test:
"Alicia, I wasn't thrown out again, into water, was I?"
"No. That was delirium, dear. You were frightfully ill for a while,
Sophy." Her face paled. "So ill that The Author fled, because he
wouldn't stay in the house and see--what we expected to see. He said
it would permanently shatter his nerves. But he has wired every day
since."
"It was sensible of him to go. And it's kind of him to wire." I said
no more about the water.
"Everybody has been kind. And it wasn't duty kindness, either. It
was kind kindness!" said Alicia, lucidly. "Do you know what they're
saying in Hyndsville now? They're saying old Sophronisba played a
joke on herself." She left me to digest that as best I might.
It isn't pleasant to be ill anywhere. But it isn't altogether
unpleasant to be on the sick list in South Carolina.
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