my pet; concussion often takes two days."

Two days with his eyes like that! The consolation was not so vivid as
Felix might have wished; but she quite understood that he was doing his
best to give it. She suddenly remembered that he had no room to sleep
in. He must use Derek's. No! That, it appeared, was to be for her when
she came off duty. Felix was going to have an all-night sitting in the
kitchen. He had been looking forward to an all-night sitting for many
years, and now he had got his chance. It was a magnificent
opportunity--"without your mother, my dear, to insist on my sleeping."
And staring at his smile, Nedda thought: 'He's like Granny--he comes out
under difficulties. If only I did!'

The ice arrived by motor-cycle just before her watch began. It was some
comfort to have that definite thing to see to. How timorous and humble
are thoughts in a sick-room, above all when the sick are stretched behind
the muffle of unconsciousness, withdrawn from the watcher by half-death!
And yet, for him or her who loves, there is at least the sense of being
alone with the loved one, of doing all that can be done; and in some
strange way of twining hearts with the exiled spirit. To Nedda, sitting
at his feet, and hardly ever turning eyes away from his still face, it
sometimes seemed that the flown spirit was there beside her. And she saw
into his soul in those hours of watching, as one looking into a stream
sees the leopard-like dapple of its sand and dark-strewn floor, just
reached by sunlight. She saw all his pride, courage, and impatience, his
reserve, and strange unwilling tenderness, as she had never seen them.
And a queer dreadful feeling moved her that in some previous existence
she had looked at that face dead on a field of battle, frowning up at the
stars. That was absurd--there were no previous existences! Or was it
prevision of what would come some day?

When, at half past nine, the light began to fail, she lighted two candles
in tall, thin, iron candlesticks beside her. They burned without
flicker, those spires of yellow flame, slowly conquering the dying
twilight, till in their soft radiance the room was full of warm dusky
shadows, the night outside ever a deeper black. Two or three times his
mother came, looked at him, asked her if she should stay, and, receiving
a little silent shake of the head, went away again. At eleven o'clock,
when once more she changed the ice-cap, his eyes had still n