From fear of contagion, in case the meningitis Alexander was suffering from should become tuberculous, Mme. Meyrin was obliged to refrain from seeing Tekla. She had kissed her hastily, and had hung for a moment only over the beauty of the little girl, who was growing to be ravishingly pretty. As a measure of prudence they had placed her with her maid and Mme. Bernard, the governess of the little prince, in the left wing of the château, while Mme. Meyrin was to share Vera's rooms.
As for Mme. Podoi, Dr. Psaroff required that she should not have a room near her grandson, as a sick-chamber should be visited by as few people as possible. In consequence of this arrangement, Lise hardly saw her mother once a day, and then but for a few minutes. There could, therefore, be no question between them of anything but the state of Alexander's health, and she was thus protected from the unkind remarks that the general's wife would have been sure to make in reference to the past if their interviews had been more frequent and longer.
For six days and nights Mme. Meyrin took no rest. When she was by her son her eyes never left him, tortured as she was by his moans, watching his slightest movement, trying to make out the disconnected words that he uttered in the height of delirium, beseeching him with sweet words and a low voice to know her, and caressing with her lips his little thin, burning hands. When she had to yield her place to Vera, and go and lie down in an adjoining room, she could not get a moment's sleep. If her son should die while she was away from his side! And if, on the other hand, his first look, his first conscious moment, should be another's, and not hers!
Then she would creep to the half-closed door and listen, panting, anxious, jealous, and ready to spring forward.
This martyrdom had lasted for a week with alternations of hope and despair, when one morning, after a night better than any he had had since he took to his bed, the little patient opened his eyes, and, through the goodness of God's love and pardon, his look was turned to his mother and showed the surprise he felt. Then he closed his eyes again slowly, as if to sink once more into a sweet dream. In a few moments, opening them again, he hesitated for an instant, like a child who has scarcely learned to speak, and a smile struggling to his lips, still discolored by his sickness, he murmured: "Mamma."
Lise stifled a cry of happiness, and fell upon her knees.
"Be calm, madame," said the doctor, appealingly, he and Vera being present at this return to life.
But Mme. Meyrin heard nothing but this word, "mamma," which told her that her son knew her again, and was restored to her. What blessed sunshine for a mother is such a look from her child! How her heart, turned to ice by fear, is warmed again by it! What a chain of iron are his little weak arms when they are twined about her neck! What a delight is his laugh!
Bending over her son, Lise prayed and smiled together. The doctor had not the heart to order her away; but when, after a short examination, he declared that the patient was saved, she grew deathly pale, and pressed her hand to her heart. She felt as if she were being suffocated. Happily, almost immediately afterward she burst out sobbing:
"Let her weep," said Psaroff to Vera; "tears are the best soothers."