The crisis of her disease was approaching, and the next twenty-four hours would decide her fate, and in consequence, my own, if not her brother Arthur's.

As I contemplated the suspense of these twenty-four hours, I revolted madly for the first time against the restrictions of my prison.
I wanted air, movement, the rush into danger, which my horse or my automobile might afford.

Anything which would drag my thoughts from that sick room, and the anticipated stir of that lovely form into conscious life and suffering.

Her eyes--I could see her eyes wakening upon the world again, after her long wandering in the unknown and unimaginable intricacies of ungoverned thought and delirious suggestion.

Eyes of violet colour and infinite expression; eyes which would make a man's joy if they smiled on him in innocence; but which, as I well knew, had burned more than once, in her short but strenuous life, with fiery passions; and might, at the instant of waking, betray this same unholy gleam under the curious gaze of the unsympathetic ones set in watch over her.
What would her first word be?
Whither would her first thought fly?
To Adelaide or to me; to Arthur or to her own frightened and appalled self?
I maddened as I dwelt upon the possibilities of this moment.