o disavow it for a simpler motive if he
applied at the door. He stressed the motive, produced the sentiment, and
passed thus naturally into hypocrisy, as lovers precipitated by their
blood among the crises of human conditions are often forced to do. He had
come to inquire after Lady Dunstane. He remembered that it had struck him
as a duty, on hearing of her dangerous illness.

The door opened before he touched the bell. Sir Lukin knocked against him
and stared.

'Ah!--who--?--you?' he said, and took him by the arm and pressed him on
along the gravel. 'Dacier, are you? Redworth's in there. Come on a step,
come! It's the time for us to pray. Good God! There's mercy for sinners.
If ever there was a man! . . . But, oh, good God! she's in their hands
this minute. My saint is under the knife.'

Dacier was hurried forward by a powerful hand. 'They say it lasts about
five minutes, four and a half--or more! My God! When they turned me out
of her room, she smiled to keep me calm. She said: "Dear husband": the
veriest wretch and brutallest husband ever poor woman . . . and a saint!
a saint on earth! Emmy!' Tears burst from him.

He pulled forth his watch and asked Dacier for the time.

'A minute's gone in a minute. It's three minutes and a half. Come faster.
They're at their work! It's life or death. I've had death about me. But
for a woman! and your wife! and that brave soul! She bears it so. Women
are the bravest creatures afloat. If they make her shriek, it'll be only
if she thinks I 'm out of hearing. No: I see her. She bears it!--They
mayn't have begun yet. It may all be over! Come into the wood. I must
pray. I must go on my knees.'

Two or three steps in the wood, at the mossed roots of a beech, he fell
kneeling, muttering, exclaiming.

The tempest of penitence closed with a blind look at his watch, which he
left dangling. He had to talk to drug his thoughts.

'And mind you,' said he, when he had rejoined Dacier and was pushing his
arm again, rounding beneath the trees to a view of the house, 'for a man
steeped in damnable iniquity! She bears it all for me, because I begged
her, for the chance of her living. It's my doing--this knife! Macpherson
swears there is a chance. Thomson backs him. But they're at her, cutting!
. . . The pain must be awful--the mere pain! The gentlest creature ever
drew breath! And women fear blood--and her own! And a head! She ought to
have married the best man alive, not a--! I can't remembe