A vision of the dining-room came before me, and I shook my head.

"Still," he urged, "it would be well to eat something." And, turning to the hostess, "He had better have a beefsteak and a glass of Marsala." The look of amazement with which I heard this caught the Doctor's eye.

"Don't you like _bistecca_ ?" he inquired.

I suggested that, for one in a very high fever, with a good deal of lung congestion, beefsteak seemed a trifle solid, and Marsala somewhat heating.

"Oh!" cried he, "but we must keep the machine going." And thereupon he took his genial leave.
I had some fear that my hostess might visit upon me her resentment of the Doctor's reproaches; but nothing of the kind.