III.
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T noon next day when I called, I found Boris walking restlessly about his studio.
“Geneviève is asleep just now,” he told me, “the sprain is nothing, but why should she have such a high fever? The doctor can’t account for it; or else he will not,” he muttered.
“Geneviève has a fever?” I asked.
“I should say so, and has actually been a little light-headed at intervals all night. The idea! gay little Geneviève, without a care in the world,—and she keeps saying her heart’s broken, and she wants to die!”
My own heart stood still.
Boris leaned against the door of his studio, looking down, his hands in his pockets, his kind, keen eyes clouded, a new line of trouble drawn “over the mouth’s good mark, that made the smile.” The maid had orders to summon him the instant Geneviève opened her eyes. We waited and waited, and Boris growing restless wandered about, fussing with modelling wax and red clay. Suddenly he started for the next room. “Come and see my rose-colored bath full of death,” he cried.
“Is it death?” I asked to humor his mood.
“You are not prepared to call it life, I suppose,” he answered. As he spoke he plucked a solitary gold fish squirming and twisting out of its globe. “We’ll send this one after the
