How long it was before he again opened his eyes he could not tell.  The shooting throes were still there but he could endure them now and even think in an incoherent fashion.  He gazed around.  The light grudgingly admitted by a small port-hole revealed a bare prison-like cell.  Realization of what it all meant, his being there, swept over him, and, in a semi-delirious frenzy, he tugged at his fastenings.  He did not succeed in releasing himself; he only increased the hurtling waves of pain in his head.  What did she think of her valiant rescuer now, he who had raised her hopes so high but to dash them utterly?

Some one, some time later, brought him water and gave him bread, releasing his wrists while he ate and fastening them again when he had finished.  The hours that seemed days passed.  During that time he half thought he had another visitor but was not sure.  The delirium had returned; he strove to think lucidly, but knew himself very light-headed.  He imagined Sonia Turgeinov came to him, that she looked down on him.

“Mon Dieu!  It is my canine keeper; the man with the dogs.  What a lame and impotent conclusion for one so clever!  I looked for something better from you, my intrepid friend, who dared to come aboard in that thrilling manner—­who managed to follow me, through what arts, I do not know.  How are the mighty fallen!”

Her tone was low, mocking.  He disdained to reply.

“Really, I am disappointed, after my not having betrayed who you were to the prince.”

“Why didn’t you?” he said.

She laughed.  “Perhaps because I am an artist, and it seemed inartistic to intervene—­to interrupt the action at an inopportune moment—­to stultify what promised to be an unusually involved complication.  When first I saw and recognized you on the Nevski, it was like one of those divine surprises of the master dramatist, M. Sardou.  Really, I was indebted for the thrill of it.  Besides, had I spoken, the prince might have tossed you overboard; he is quite capable of doing so.  That, too, would have been inartistic, would have turned a comedy of love into rank melodrama.”

Rank nonsense!  Of course such a conversation could not be real.  But he cried out in the dream:  “What matter if his excellency had tossed me overboard?  What good am I here?”

“To her, you mean?”

“To her, of course.”  Bitterly.

The vision’s eyes were very bright; her plastic, rather mature form bent nearer.  He felt a cool hand at the bandage, readjusting it about his head.  That, naturally, could not be.  She who had betrayed Betty Dalrymple to the prince would not be sedulous about Mr. Heatherbloom’s injury.

“Foolish boy!” she breathed.  Incongruous solicitude!  “Who are you?  No common dog-tender—­of that I am sure.  What have you been?”

“What—­” Wildly.

“There! there!” said half-soothingly that immaterial, now maternal visitant.  “Never mind.”