III

At noon next day when I called, I found Boris walking restlessly about
his studio.

"Genevieve is asleep just now," he told me, "the sprain is nothing, but
why should she have such a high fever? The doctor can't account for it;
or else he will not," he muttered.

"Genevieve has a fever?" I asked.

"I should say so, and has actually been a little light-headed at
intervals all night. The idea! gay little Genevieve, without a care in
the world,--and she keeps saying her heart's broken, and she wants to
die!"

My own heart stood still.

Boris leaned against the door of his studio, looking down, his hands in
his pockets, his kind, keen eyes clouded, a new line of trouble drawn
"over the mouth's good mark, that made the smile." The maid had orders to
summon him the instant Genevieve opened her eyes. We waited and waited,
and Boris, growing restless, wandered about, fussing with modelling wax
and red clay. Suddenly he started for the next room. "Come and see my
rose-coloured bath full of death!" he cried.

"Is it death?" I asked, to humour his mood.

"You are not prepared to call it life, I suppose," he answered. As he
spoke he plucked a solitary goldfish squirming and twisting out of its