She sat down heavily; against her inner knowledge, she had been hoping against hope. The red and yellow striped awning over the balcony cast a bright glow on the floor, through the parted Venetian blinds; a bowl of late roses stood on the table, filling the air with their musky perfume, and the heavy droning of flies against the ceiling emphasized the noon silence. The girl sat like a graven image, staring straight before her with terrible dry eyes, her nerveless hands hung by her side.

Ferrati drew up a chair, and took one of the limp hands in his own.

"Will you not tell me all about it, my child? Remember a doctor is a sort of lay confessor. Perhaps I can help you?"

Thus had she offered to help the unfortunate girl in S. Mario! She laughed mirthlessly.

"I said that myself to a girl a few days ago, she is coming to-morrow for me to help her--the blind leading the blind!"

Her hardness alarmed the Doctor. "I must break this," he thought. "I must make her cry."

But she had no intention of crying; in a hard, even voice she told him the tale of Prince Mirko, and the fateful drive over the Campagna, and when she had finished, relapsed into silence.

"Poor little girl!" he said, stroking her hand. "Poor little girl!"

She looked at him wonderingly.

"Then you do not despise me?" she asked.

"G.o.d forbid! I have seen too much of the world and of men. And if you have been foolish, if you have done wrong--which you have not, in my eyes--you are paying for it heavily enough, G.o.d knows!"

"I should feel better about it, if I had really loved him--I thought I did, but I know now that I did not--"

"Many women do not love their husbands, the fathers of their children, and it is not counted sinful," he said, smiling.

"Yes, but marriage is different--If I had loved him I should not feel so humiliated.--I was foolish and weak, I let myself go--And now--"

"And now, my dear, you pay the penalty. It is weakness, not vice, that expiates, in this world," said Ferrati grimly. "Yes, you expiate, there is no obviating that. But there is no necessity for bearing more than is unavoidable--we must consider what is to be done. The past is the past, there is no helping that, we must think of the present. Can you go home to your people?"

"Home? Oh, never!" cried Ragna, hiding her face in her hands. "They would turn me out!"

"I thought as much--the usual charity of a virtuous family. Full of self-righteousness--sends missionaries to the heathen and its own flesh and blood to perdition," he added under his breath.

"Well then, home being out of the question, we must think of something else.--Leave it to me my child. I will think it over; you shall not worry, leave it all to me. I shall not fail you."

His honest, steadfast eyes met hers, and she felt in some degree rea.s.sured and comforted.

"You are good!" she cried.

He patted her shoulder. "Go to bed now, and keep up the pretence of the headache." (Indeed, it was no pretence by this time.) "I will come to see you again later in the day, and we will talk it all over quietly. In the meantime you must rest." He took from his pocket a little bottle of pellets and gave her one--"Take this at once, it will make you sleep, and when I come back you will be rested and clear in your mind, so that we can discuss your future plans. I shall leave orders that you are not to be disturbed. Remember, above all, that you have nothing to fear, I, at least, shall stand by you, and see you through--you shall see that everything can be arranged."

She made no answer, so he pa.s.sed his hand lightly over her bowed head, and left the room.

Ragna laid the pellet on the table, and sat on stupidly in her chair, her head supported by her hands. She felt blank and stunned; gradually, out of her blind chaos of misery rose terrible and concrete this thing that was upon her; it obsessed her half-paralysed brain with a sense of inevitable, unreasonable doom. She wondered dully why she had not thought of this contingency, and yet the possibility of it had never entered her mind. To bear a child of _his_, and in this way! She shivered with horror. And the shame, the disgrace of it! For this could not be hidden, this could not be pa.s.sed over and buried in oblivion--the coming of the child would blazen her dishonour to the eyes of all men.

Oh why could she not die? Surely things had been bad enough as they were before, but this--this was unendurable. The water sparkled there invitingly, beneath the balcony--a plunge and it would soon be over. Why should she live, why bear this shame, while _he_ went scot free? What was there to compel her to tread this Via Crucis, when the way of escape lay open? The water called her; with a feverish hunted look in her eyes she staggered to the balcony, drew the awning aside. The door behind her opened silently, a strong hand grasped her shoulder.

"Doctor!" she gasped.

"Signorina," asked Ferrati sternly, "what were you about to do?

Something warned me to come back, and thank Heaven I have been in time!

You were about to throw yourself into the Ca.n.a.l, were you not?"

He forced her into a chair, and stood towering accusingly over her. She met his gaze with defiant despair.

"Yes, I was. What right have you to stop me?"

"I have the right to prevent you from adding crime to weakness. Yes, crime," he added, seeing her wince.

"Understand me, had it been a question of yourself only, I should not say this--you see my morality is not of the conventional pattern--but you have not only yourself to think of, there is the child--your child.

If by your past weakness, wittingly or unwittingly, you have incurred this responsibility, you cannot repudiate it, you must bear the consequences, you cannot brush them aside. You think that this, the physical part, and the disgrace implied were a price that you could avoid paying by forfeiting your life, but you cannot forfeit for another. You are no longer alone, you have another life to consider, that of an innocent and helpless child who did not ask to be born--"

"But surely, Doctor," she interrupted, "I have a right to decide whether I shall bear this child or not; I have a right to choose death for it and me, rather than the stigma of shame!"

"My dear child, I do not consider that there is any shame. The shame would die in repudiating a fundamental law of nature, of sacrificing two lives to the fetish of conventional morality. What are the conventions, that you should immolate yourself and your child to them? Your duty is this: to bring your child into the world strong and healthy, and you owe it to him to make his life as happy as shall lie in your power--beyond that, nothing can rightly be required of you, and you can do no less.

You are no longer merely a girl, a woman, you are a mother!"

Ragna lifted her head; Ferrati's words opened new vistas to her wondering gaze.

"A mother!" she echoed.

"Yes, a mother, and your first duty is to be true to your child--all the rest comes after." His voice softened as he read the response to his call in the girl's face. "You will be brave, you must be brave, for the little one's sake. You see that now, do you not?"

"Yes, I understand that now--it was all so sudden, and so dreadful, it took me unawares. But I see that you are right, I will be brave now, I promise it."

Ferrati had touched the right chord, the chord of self-sacrifice, the battle was won, and he knew it; never again would Ragna attempt self-destruction, come what might.

"And now you will rest as I told you, until this afternoon?"

She signified "yes" with her head. Ferrati brought a gla.s.s of water from the toilet table, and she took the little pellet. Then he rang for the chambermaid, and when she had come, said to her:

"Help the Signorina into bed, she has a bad headache, and must rest. I have given her some sleeping medicine, and I leave it to you to see that she is not disturbed. You can tell the Signorina that I am coming back later, and will speak to her then."

So he left the room a second time, his heart full of pity for the wretched girl, the more so, as he had found her so readily responsive to his appeal to duty.

"Poor child!" he repeated. "Poor, poor child!"

He returned to the Lido and lunched with his wife, but was silent and preoccupied. The Signora, accustomed to these moods of her husband's, when his patients caused him anxiety, forbore to question him. When he had finished eating, he lit his _toscano_, and walked up and down the long terrace of the hotel, his brows knit, his hands joined behind his back; finally he rejoined his wife in her room, whither she had retired for the siesta. She raised her head from the pillow, as he entered, and put down the novel she had been reading.

"_Ebbene, Rico?_" she asked.

"Virginia mia, I am worried about a patient of mine, a girl who is in great trouble--and I don't know what to do to help her!"

"Ragna Andersen?" she asked quietly.

"How did you guess?"

"My dear man, you are so hopelessly transparent! Besides, I am not blind--a look at her face this morning would have been enough for anybody."

"The fact is, Virginia, I don't know what to do about it."