CHAPTER XVI
The days passed; I grew slowly better; the wound still had to be drained and bandaged, and the doctor kept me to my bed. Kay, writing from Toronto, had contrived to send us ten dollars. More French translations had gone to McCloy, but only one or two had been used.
If the loneliness of the long days was dismal, the feverish nights were worse. I knew my few books by heart; Shelley and the "Gita" were indeed inexhaustible, but I longed for something new. To play the fiddle was too tiring. There was endless time for reflection . . . and, thank heaven, through the two dirty windows I could watch the sky. Many a story I published fifteen years later had its germ in the apparently dead moments of those wearisome hours, although at the time it never once occurred to me to try and write, not even the desire being in me.
It was the interminable nights that were most haunted. In the daylight there was colour in the changing clouds and sky, a touch of pink, a flame of sunset gold that opened the narrow crack through which I slipped into some strange interior state of happiness. There were the visits of the beloved, mysterious doctor, too. But the night was otherwise. The gas I left burning till Boyde woke and turned it out in the morning, made it impossible to see the stars. I could never settle down until he was comfortably asleep beside me. He kept late hours always. I reproached and scolded, yet in the end I always forgave. It was a comfort to know him within reach of my hand, while at the same time I dreaded his coming. My mixed feelings had reached that stage—I feared his coming and yet longed for it.
I lay waiting, listening for his step. Far below I
