“Simply that I am not going to take any more medicine, thank you,” I replied quietly, “as I now wish to get well.”

“My orders from the doctor are that you shall take it,” she said grimly; “and I’ll make you.”

She poured out another glass of the medicine and approached the bed, with the intention, it seemed, of opening my mouth and pouring it down.  But I had had no weakening, sense-destroying drug that morning, and nature was rapidly curing me.

She forgot that.  As she came up, I sprang from the bed, put my hand on her shoulder, and forced her to the door.  She shrieked and protested, but she could not resist.  I put her outside and locked the door.

Then I sank down trembling with exhaustion, for I was very weak.  But I rejoiced to know my strength had come back even that much.  I crossed to the window after a moment and looked out.  In the distance glimmered the sea, blue and joyous and beautiful.  How I longed to be out near it, in its warm salt breeze!  Beside my window grew the companion of my weary hours, the waving palm; beneath there was a little flagged court, shut in by small buildings belonging to the hotel.  There was a well there and a banana-tree, and a man sitting down plucking alive a struggling fowl.  I called to him in Spanish: 

“Send the administrador to me.”  And he looked up.

A frightened look came into his face as he saw who it was that called him.  Then he nodded, and carrying the unhappy bird by its feet, head downwards, disappeared into the hotel.

People and things move slowly with the Spaniards.  I waited an hour, gazing out into the amethystine distance, wondering if Suzee’s glad, careless, irresponsible little spirit was dancing there in the sunbeams; and then a knock came at the door.

I walked to it and said:  “Who is there?”

I recognised the voice of the administrador in his answer, and unlocked the door and bid him come in.

He did so, with an alarmed aspect.

“Have you seen the nurse?” I asked.

“Yes,” he replied; “she told me you were again delirious and had refused to take your medicine, and that she must refuse all responsibility for you.”

“I am not at all delirious, as you see,” I answered; “I simply want to get well, and each time I take their stuff I get worse; so I am going to cease taking it.  Now what I ask you to do is to keep that woman and the doctor and the surgeon out of my room.  All I want is to be left alone, to be quiet.  The surgeon took all the stitches out yesterday.  There is no need for him to see me again, and the others I won’t have in here.”

“But the responsibility, really, Senor,” the man muttered looking all ways at once, “and the good doctor—­such an amiable man.  What object could he have in not curing the Senor quickly?”

“The object of prolonging his fees,” I answered smiling, “I should think.  When I get well, his fees stop.”  Then it occurred to me this man had also an object in keeping me here, since my hotel bill would certainly stop, like the doctors’ fees, when I got well; so I added: