“Yes, yes; it’s like a band of hot iron,” moaned poor Frithiof. Then suddenly starting up in wild excitement, “There’s Blanche! there’s Blanche! Let me go to her! Let me go! I will see her once more—only this once!”
Roy with some difficulty held him down, and after awhile he seemed to come to himself. “Was I talking nonsense?” he said. “It’s a horrid feeling not being able to control one’s self. If I go crazy you can just let me die, please. Life’s bad enough now, and would be intolerable then. There she is again! She’s smiling at me. Oh, Blanche—you did care once. Come back! Come back! He can’t love you as I love! But it’s no use—no use! she is worse than dead. I tell you I saw it in that cursed paper, and I saw it in her own face. Why, one might have known! All women are like it. What do they dare so long as their vanity is satisfied? It’s just as Björnsen says:
“‘If thou hadst not so smiled on me,
Now I should not thus weep for thee.’”
And then he fell into incoherent talk, chiefly in Norwegian, but every now and then repeating the English rendering of Björnsen’s lines.
Meanwhile Roy turned over in his mind half a dozen schemes, and at length decided to leave Frithiof during one of the quiet intervals, while he went for their own doctor, Miss Charlotte mounting guard outside the door, and promising to go to him if he seemed to need care.
Dr. Morris, who was an old friend, listened to Roy’s description, and returned with him at once, much to the relief of poor Miss Charlotte, who was frightened out of her senses by one of Frithiof’s paroxysms of wild excitement.
“Do you think seriously of him?” said Roy, when, the excitement having died down, Frithiof lay in a sort of stupor, taking no notice at all of his surroundings.
“If we can manage to get him any sleep he will pull through all right,” said Dr. Morris, in his abrupt way. “If not, he will sink before many days. You had better send for his mother, if he has one.”
“He has only a sister, and she is in Norway.”