"What is the matter with Alresca is something in his most secret
soul."

"And you can form no idea of what it is?"

She made no reply.

"Doctors certainly can't cure such diseases as that," I said.

"They can try," said Rosetta Rosa.

"You wish me to try?" I faced her.

She inclined her head.

"Then I will," I said with sudden passionateness, forgetting even that
I was not Alresca's doctor.

The carriage stopped. In the space of less than a quarter of an hour,
so it seemed to me, we had grown almost intimate--she and I.

Alresca's man was awaiting us in the portico of the Devonshire, and
without a word he led us to his master. Alresca lay on his back on a
couch in a large and luxuriously littered drawing-room. The pallor of
his face and the soft brilliance of his eyes were infinitely pathetic,
and again he reminded me of the tragic and gloomy third act of
"Tristan." He greeted us kindly in his quiet voice.

"I have brought the young man," said Rosa, "and now, after I have