It was not until the end of the second week, the twenty-sixth of March, that the fever left him entirely.  He spoke, slept, had vivid dreams.  In a tired voice and sometimes with a touch of humour, he told of the wild things that had passed through his brain.  He expressed desires, showed gratitude, inquired for the farmer on whom he had operated, and smiled when Peter told him the wound had healed promptly and the farmer had driven out to bring some guinea-fowls for bouillon.

Miss Burns’s management of the household was exemplary.  Such considerate, ever-ready ministrations as Frederick received do not fall to the lot of many men.  Physicians like Peter and his wife are not, of course, prone to prudery.  Neither was Miss Burns, with her strong arms and sculptor hands, which were accustomed to modelling from life.  Though her manner was calm and composed, there was secret passion and a strong maternal instinct in her nursing.  She seemed to have found her true vocation.

At her bidding Peter sent cablegrams to Frederick’s parents, keeping them informed of his condition, and notifying them when he was pronounced out of danger.  With the request that it be held for him until his health was restored, she returned a thick letter from the general written before Frederick was taken ill, correctly assuming that it contained details of his wife’s tragic end.  She knew that by keeping the letter, she might be tempted to betray its existence to the sick man and would then find it too hard to prevent him from reading it.  At the beginning of the fourth week, she received a letter from the old general, in which he thanked her and the two doctors from the depths of his heart for all they had done for his son.

“I may tell you,” he wrote, “that poor Angele did not die a natural death.  At the institution, they knew she needed the strictest watching, but, unfortunately, even with the greatest care, there are moments when a patient is not observed.  It was one of those moments that Angele seized to take poison, one of the poisons that are frequently used and are not kept under lock and key.”

The snow had melted away.  Slowly, slowly Frederick adjusted himself to life again.  There was a mildness in him like the mildness of nature outside his window.  It was a surprisingly sweet experience.  The world seemed to be granting him indulgence.  Lying on his clean bed, with the little pewter sailing vessels on the old seaman’s clock ticking to and fro, he had a sense of security and, what is more, a sense of rejuvenation, of having expiated and received pardon.  From torrid black clouds, a storm had come with thunder and lightning to cleanse the air.  It was still rumbling on the distance horizon, farther and farther away, never to return again, leaving behind in the weak man a rich, full, peaceful joy in life.

“A cure of force, a violent eruption and revolution has purged your body of all poisons and putrid matter,” said Peter Schmidt.