y beg him to take food, he merely shakes his square
black head and falls again to watching the unconscious face of Beauvayse.
The conscious brain behind its blankly-staring eyes is thinking:

"Those paragraphs.... In black and white the thing looked damnable. And
think of the gossip and tongue-wagging. Whatever they say about me ...
she'll be the one to suffer. They're never so hard on ... the man!"

He has uttered these last words audibly; they pierce to the heart's core
of the mute, impassive watcher. Strong antipathy is as clairvoyant as
strong sympathy, and with a leap of understanding, and a fresh surge of
fierce resentment, Saxham acknowledges the deadly truth contained in those
few halting words. She will be the one to suffer. Beside the martyrdom
inevitably to be endured by the white saint, the agony of the sinner's
death-bed pales and dwindles. There is a savage struggle once again
between Saxham the man and Saxham the surgeon beside the bed of death.

His sudden irrepressible movement has knocked the tumbler from the little
iron washstand at his elbow. It falls and shivers into fragments at his
feet. And then--the upturned face slants a little, and the eyes that have
been blankly staring at the roof-tarpaulins come down to the level of his
own. He and her fallen enemy regard each other silently for a moment. Then
Beauvayse says weakly, in the phantom of the old gay, boyish voice that
wooed and won her:

"Thought it was Wrynche. Where is----"

The question ends in a groan.

Saxham the man shrinks from him with unutterable loathing. But Saxham the
surgeon stoops over him, saying, in distinct, even tones:

"Captain Wrynche was here. He has been recalled to Hotchkiss Outpost
North. Drink this." This is a little measure of brandy-and-water, in which
some tabloids of morphia have been dissolved. And Beauvayse obeys,
panting:

"All right. But ... more a job for the Chaplain than the Doctor, isn't
it?"

"Do you wish the Chaplain sent for?"

There is a glimmer of the old lazy, defiant humour in the beautiful dim
eyes.

"What could he do?"

Saxham answers--how strangely for him, the Denier:

"He would probably pray beside you, and talk to you of God."

There is a pause. The faint, almost breathless whisper asks:

"It's night, isn't it?"

"It is dark and stormy night."

Beauvayse says, in the whispering voice interrupted by long, gasping sighs
that are beginning to have a jarring rattle in them:

"