You must have played very softly." I would tell a thousand more lies worse than that one to see the look of
relief that came into her face. She smiled adorably, and said in her
natural voice: "Alec, I tripped on that wolf's head, and I think my ankle
is sprained. Please call Marie, and then go home." I did as she bade me, and left her there when the maid came in. III

At 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-coloured bath full of death!" he cried. "Is it death?" I asked, to humour his mood. "You are not prepared to call it life, I suppose," he answered. As he
spoke he plucked a solitary goldfish squirming and twisting out of its
globe. "We'll send this one after the other--wherever that is," he said. There was feverish excitement in his voice. A dull weight of fever lay on
my limbs and on my brain as I followed him to the fair crystal pool with
its pink-tinted sides; and he dropped the creature in. Falling, its
scales flashed with a hot orange gleam in its angry twistings and
contortions; the moment it struck the liquid it became rigid and sank
heavily to the bottom. Then came the milky foam, the splendid hues
radiating on the surface and then the shaft of pure serene light broke
through from seemingly infinite depths. Boris plunged in his hand and
drew out an exquisite marble thing, blue-veined, rose-tinted, and
glistening with opalescent drops. "Child's play," he muttered, and looked wearily, longingly at me,--as if
I could answer such questions! But Jack Scott came in and entered into
the "game," as he called it, with ardour. Nothing would do but to try the
experiment on the white rabbit then and there. I was willing that Boris
should find distraction from his cares, but I hated to see the life go
out of a warm, living creature and I declined to be present. Picking up a
book at random, I sat down in the studio to read. Alas! I had found
_The King in Yellow_. After a few moments, which seemed ages, I was
putting it away with a nervous shudder, when Boris and Jack came in
bringing their marble rabbit. At the same time the bell rang above, and a
cry came from the sick-room. Boris was gone like a flash, and the next
moment he called, "Jack, run for the doctor; bring him back with you. Alec, come here." I went and stood at her door. A frightened maid came out in haste and ran
away to fetch some remedy. Geneviève, sitting bolt upright, with crimson
cheeks and glittering eyes, babbled incessantly and resisted Boris'
gentle restraint. He called me to help. At my first touch she sighed and
sank back, closing her eyes, and then--then--as we still bent above her,
she opened them again, looked straight into Boris' face--poor
fever-crazed girl!--and told her secret. At the same instant our three
lives turned into new channels; the bond that held us so long together
snapped for ever and a new bond was forged in its place, for she had
spoken my name, and as the fever tortured her, her heart poured out its
load of hidden sorrow. Amazed and dumb I bowed my head, while my face
burned like a live coal, and the blood surged in my ears, stupefying me
with its clamour. Incapable of movement, incapable of speech, I listened
to her feverish words in an agony of shame and sorrow. I could not
silence her, I could not look at Boris. Then I felt an arm upon my
shoulder, and Boris turned a bloodless face to mine. "It is not your fault, Alec; don't grieve so if she loves you--" but he
could not finish; and as the doctor stepped swiftly into the room,
saying--"Ah, the fever!" I seized Jack Scott and hurried him to the
street, saying, "Boris would rather be alone." We crossed the street to
our own apartments, and that night, seeing I was going to be ill too, he
went for the doctor again. The last thing I recollect with any
distinctness was hearing Jack say, "For Heaven's sake, doctor, what ails
him, to wear a face like that?" and I thought of _The King in
Yellow_ and the Pallid Mask. I was very ill, for the strain of two years which I had endured since
that fatal May morning when Geneviève murmured, "I love you, but I think
I love Boris best," told on me at last. I had never imagined that it
could become more than I could endure. Outwardly tranquil, I had deceived
myself. Although the inward battle raged night after night, and I, lying
alone in my room, cursed myself for rebellious thoughts unloyal to Boris
and unworthy of Geneviève, the morning always brought relief, and I
returned to Geneviève and to my dear Boris with a heart washed clean by
the tempests of the night. Never in word or deed or thought while with them had I betrayed my sorrow
even to myself. The mask of self-deception was no longer a mask for me, it was a part of
me. Night lifted it, laying bare the stifled truth below; but there was
no one to see except myself, and when the day broke the mask fell back
again of its own accord. These thoughts passed through my troubled mind
as I lay sick, but they were hopelessly entangled with visions of white
creatures, heavy as stone, crawling about in Boris' basin,--of the wolf's
head on the rug, foaming and snapping at Geneviève, who lay smiling
beside it. I thought, too, of the King in Yellow wrapped in the fantastic
colours of his tattered mantle, and that bitter cry of Cassilda, "Not
upon us, oh King, not upon us!" Feverishly I struggled to put it from me,
but I saw the lake of Hali, thin and blank, without a ripple or wind to
stir it, and I saw the towers of Carcosa behind the moon. Aldebaran, the
Hyades, Alar, Hastur, glided through the cloud-rifts which fluttered and
flapped as they passed like the scolloped tatters of the King in Yellow. Among all these, one sane thought persisted. It never wavered, no matter
what else was going on in my disordered mind, that my chief reason for
existing was to meet some requirement of Boris and Geneviève. What this
obligation was, its nature, was never clear; sometimes it seemed to be
protection, sometimes support, through a great crisis.