"He will live.... He's past the crisis...."
The blackness closed in again.
She came to herself on the bed in Cecil's dressing-room. There was an old etching of Magdalene Tower on the wall at the bed's foot.
She thought: "What a pity to call it 'Maudlin' instead of Magdalene...." Then everything weltered in on her at once—waves, wreckage, as of a world after flood. She was on her feet. She was in the other room. Anne Harding and Bellamy had hold of her. Her head felt hollow and very light. Her voice sounded light and piping in her own ears.
"Tell ... tell...." she was saying.
Anne Harding put her finger to her lips—glanced towards a smooth white bed. There was a little round of sunlight dancing on it. "Ssssh...." whispered Anne. "He's asleep.... We mustn't wake him. You've been very ill yourself, but our little man's doing finely."
They helped her to a chair beside the bed—Cecil's old leather armchair. Anne Harding could see his huge form in it as he used to sit glowering at her between the reduced doses of morphia. It gave her an odd feeling to put Sophy in that chair, and tuck a rug about her.
They all three sat in silence watching the sleeping child.
Sophy whispered once, with her avid eyes on the little, sunken face:
"Is he really only ... asleep?"