When, the crisis having passed, Dr. Psaroff raised his head, the child was calm, his eyes were closed, his thin little face no longer bespoke suffering, but a deep exhaustion. Lise touched with trembling lips the darkened eyelids of her son, and stretched out her hands to the doctor, who drew her aside and said:
"You were right to come, madame. From the first day of his illness Alexander has been tended by an angel of goodness whom fear of contagion has not checked for a moment; but sometimes a mother's kisses can do more than all our science. If we can struggle on for five or six days more, without any new accident, I will answer for the result."
"May God hear you," said the unhappy woman.
Then, through her tears, recognizing Soublaieff's daughter, who had drawn near and was bending to kiss her hand, as formerly, she took her to her heart, saying:
"You? Ah, may Heaven reward you!"
"Madame la Comtesse," replied Vera, giving, from an exquisite delicacy of feeling, her maiden rank to the ex-Princess Olsdorf, "I have only done my duty."
"Yes; may Heaven reward you!" Mme. Meyrin repeated. "I know well what your life has been since you left Elva. Calumny itself has not dared to breathe a word against you. Let us forget the past and speak of it no more. Let us think of nothing but the union of our efforts to save my son."
Alexander's mother noticed now that Vera was dressed as humbly as when she lived with her father, and still wore the national head-dress. Since her return to Pampeln the adorable girl had kept the oath that she swore to herself in that hour of despair when she believed that she was forsaken. She would not have had it that anything in her dress should recall the blissful days she had spent in Paris; she desired that on returning home Pierre Olsdorf should meet her again as he had found her when he took her from the farm at Elva.
Lise Barineff guessed this and her heart thrilled; but banishing every thought that had not to do with her fears as a mother, she smiled on Vera, pressing her hands affectionately.
From this day forward there was a sublime struggle between these two women. They watched in turn by the sick-bed. The disease was at its worst, and the child could not be left for a moment, for when certain symptoms were manifest the most energetic remedies had to be used.