Weeks passed away,
and still, do what they would, they could not make him so much as
smile.
One day Nanina had begun to read to him as usual, but had not
proceeded far before Marta Angrisani informed her that he had
fallen into a doze. She ceased with a sigh, and sat looking at
him sadly, as he lay near her, faint and pale and mournful in his
sleep--miserably altered from what he was when she first knew
him. It had been a hard trial to watch by his bedside in the
terrible time of his delirium; but it was a harder trial still to
look at him now, and to feel less and less hopeful with each
succeeding day.
While her eyes and thoughts were still compassionately fixed on
him, the door of the bedroom opened, and the doctor came in,
followed by Andrea D'Arbino, whose share in the strange adventure
with the Yellow Mask caused him to feel a special interest in
Fabio's progress toward recovery.
"Asleep, I see; and sighing in his sleep," said the doctor, going
to the bedside. "The grand difficulty with him," he continued,
turning to D'Arbino, "remains precisely what it was. I have
hardly left a single means untried of rousing him from that fatal
depression; yet, for the last fortnight, he has not advanced a
single step. It is impossible to shake his conviction of the
reality of that face which he saw (or rather which he thinks he
saw) when the yellow mask was removed; and, as long as he
persists in his own shocking view of the case, so long he will
lie there, getting better, no doubt, as to his body, but worse as
to his mind.
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