"No. I never have been. But this business of illness has just come and touched me on the raw, you see! You ought not to be ill. It's waste and lunacy to think of it. And I—ten years of my life wasted by a neurosis! And your father, and Lord knows how many millions more! I'll tell you this much, Marcella! Before five years have gone by I'll be in the battlefield against illness, and I'll be damned if illness won't have to look out! I loathe it, just as you do! I resent it! I'm going to stop it. Listen, old girl, as soon as you're out of that hospital, you're off to England, and I'm going to the Pater, and I'm going on my knees to beg him to give me another go at the hospital. I've got to get my tools ready, you know—"
"Do you think your father will?"
"He'll be sceptical. I should if I were he. I've been such a bounder to him in the past. But if he's too sceptical to help—well, I'll go to Buckingham Palace and ask King George to lend me the money! I should think he'd be jolly glad to think there was a chance of wiping out illness for ever."
Tears brimmed over: it was when she saw the eternal child in Louis that she loved him most, and was most afraid for him; not afraid now that he would waste himself again, but afraid that he would never touch the mountain-tops at which he was aiming.
"Yes, we'll go home," she said dreamily. "And I'll take you on Lashnagar—and we'll see them all again. I'll ask Uncle to give us the money to take us home. This wretched illness will take all we have."
"Don't you worry about your Uncle's money," he said grimly. "I'll see to that! Marcella, there's nothing I can't do now. If only I hadn't monkeyed about at the hospital, probably I'd have had the knowledge to save you all this now."
"Why, how silly!" she laughed. "If you hadn't monkeyed about at the hospital we should never have met!"
The next day she went into hospital: as the anesthetic broke over her in delicious warm waves she was frantically afraid that she was going to die; it seemed to her that these calm, business-like surgeons and nurses only treated her as one of millions, not realizing that she was Marcella Lashcairn, immensely important to Louis and Andrew. She began to feel that it would be much better if she did not have an anesthetic at all, and superintended the whole business herself intelligently. It seemed wrong that she should have no hand in a thing of such profound importance. Then her will relaxed a little and she was horribly afraid that she would feel sharp knives through the anesthetic. A blinding flash of realization abased her utterly. Just on the borders of unconsciousness she saw Kraill looking at her with his beautiful eyes clouded with disappointment.
"He knows I'm afraid of being cut up—and he knows I'm afraid of dying I—Naturally he knows—he lives in my imagination!—and he wanted my courage—But I'm not really frightened, you know. Can't you see I'm not?"
It became immediately necessary to explain this to Kraill. She tried to push the mask away. A very steady, pleasant voice was saying "breathe deeply," and she realized that she had once more been taken up by things much stronger and wiser than herself: quite conceivably they might make a mess of her, hurt her and even kill her. But they were doing wisely; and anyway, she herself could do nothing more—buoyant warm waves took her up and carried her right away from caring.