He turned a little, and moaned, and lay still; and Maurice, fearing that his presence would only add to this delirious excitement, was about to slip from the room, when his sick friend called him back.

“Maurice, don’t forget this now!  When she comes again, you must stand by her at the door there, and tell her not to be frightened:  I am not so very ill.  Tell Nina not to be frightened.  She used not to be frightened.  Ask her to remember the afternoons when I had the broken ankle—­she and Sabetta Debernardi used to come nearly every day—­and Sabetta brought her zither—­and Nina and I played dominoes.  Maurice, you never heard Nina sing to herself—­just to herself, not thinking—­and sometimes Sabetta would play a barcarola—­oh, there was one that Nina used to sing sometimes—­’Da la parte de Castelo—­ziraremo mio tesoro—­mio tesoro!—­la passara el Bucintoro—­per condur el Dose in mar’—­I heard it last night again—­but—­but all stringed instruments—­and the sound of wind and waves—­it was so strange and terrible—­when I was listening for Nina’s voice.  I think it was at Capri—­along the shores—­but it was night-time—­and I could not hear Nina because of the wind and the waves.  Oh, it was terrible, Maurice!  The sea was roaring all round the shores—­and it was so black—­only I thought if the water were about to come up and drown me, it might—­it might take me away somewhere—­I don’t know where—­perhaps to the place where Nina’s ship went down in the dark.  Why did she go away, Maurice?—­why did she go away from us all?—­the poor cianciosella!”

These rambling, wearied, broken utterances were suddenly arrested:  there was a tapping at the outer door—­and Lionel turned frightened, anxious eyes on his friend.

“I’ll go and see who it is,” Mangan said, quietly.  “Meanwhile you must lie perfectly quiet and still, Linn, and be sure that everything will come right.”

In the next room, at the open door, he found the reporter of a daily newspaper which was in the habit of devoting a column every Monday morning to music and musicians.  He was bidden to enter.  He said he wished to have the last authentic news of the condition of the popular young baritone, for of course there would be some talk, especially in “the profession,” about Mr. Moore’s non-appearance on the preceding night.

“Well,” said Maurice, in an undertone, “don’t publish anything alarming, you know, for he has friends and relatives who are naturally anxious.  The fever has increased somewhat; that is the usual thing; a nervous fever must run its course.  And to-night he has been slightly delirious—­”

“Oh, delirious?” said the reporter, with a quick look.

“Slightly—­slightly—­just wandering a little in his feverishness.  I wouldn’t make much of it.  The public don’t care for medical details.  When the crisis of the fever comes, there will be something more definite to mention.”