“I hope Miss Madison will be able to come with you next time.”
“Yes, yes,” said Aurora, lightly, taking it for a mere amiable message with which he was charging her for Estelle.
Fever no doubt colored all Gerald’s dreams that night, and was in part responsible next day for his thoughts, as he passed from languor to restlessness, and from impatience 282back to the peace of the certain knowledge that before evening he should have visitors–fair visitors.
When it seemed to him nearly time for them, he ordered Giovanna to make the room of a beautiful and perfect neatness, hiding all the medicine bottles and humble signs that one is mortal. She was directed to lay across his white counterpane that square of brocade which often formed a background for his portraits. She was asked to brush his hair and beard, and wrap his shoulders in an ivory-white shawl, thick with silk embroideries, which had been his mother’s. In a little green bronze tripod a black pastille was set burning, which sent up, slow, thin, and wavering, a gray spiral of perfume.
Keenly as he was waiting, he yet did not know when the ladies arrived. He opened his eyes, and they were there, shedding around them a beautiful freshness of health and the world outside. Estelle, in a soft green velvet edged with silver fur, held toward him an immense bunch of flowers. Aurora, in a wine-colored cloth bordered with bands of black fox, tendered a basket heaped with fruit. Both smiled, and had the kind look of angels.
They sat down beside his bed. They talked with him; all was just as usual. They asked the old questions pertinent to the case, he made the old answers, and by an effort kept up for some minutes a drawing-room conversation with them.
Then Aurora said:
“Hush! You mustn’t talk any more!” And when he thought she was going away, he wondered to see her take off her gloves.
She stood over him; he wondered what she meant to do. She felt of his forehead with her cool hand. With her 283palms, which were like her voice, of a velvet not too soft, she smoothed his forehead and temples; she stroked them over and over in a way that seemed to draw the ache out of his brain. Her fingers moved soothingly, magnetically, all around his eye-sockets, pressing down the eyelids and comforting them.