James Mackay found him on his return; still doggedly applying
friction and restoratives without having made an inch of progress for
his pains. Darkness had fallen by now, and the one lamp, set well away
from the bed, made a pallid oasis in its own vicinity. Desmond had
flung aside his coat, and his thin shirt clung in patches to his damp
body. His face was set in rigid lines; and the little doctor, who
carried a heart of flesh under a porcupine exterior, was haunted for
days by the despair in his eyes.

"How long have you been at it, man?" he asked without preamble.

"A lifetime, I should say. Possibly an hour."

"No change at all?"

"Not the slightest. But I know . . she's alive."

Mackay scrutinised the awful stillness on the bed.

"We must try hypodermic injection," he said gently. "And in the
meantime . . ." he went over to a table strewn with sick-room
paraphernalia, and poured out half a pint of champagne, "you'll please
drink that."

And as Desmond obeyed automatically, his hand shook so that the edge of
the tumbler rattled against his teeth. The body was beginning to
assert itself at last. But the stinging liquid revived him; and in a
silence, broken only by an abrupt direction or request from the
Scotchman, the last available resources were tried again and yet again,
without result. Finally Mackay looked up, and Desmond read the verdict
in his eyes.

"My dear man, it's no use," he said simply. "She's beyond our reach
now."

Desmond's lips whitened: but he braced his shoulders. "She's not. I
don't believe it," he answered, on a toneless note of decision. And
the other knew that only the slow torture of the night-watches could
brand the truth into his brain.

With a gesture of weariness, infinitely pathetic, he turned back to the
bed, and bending down, mechanically rearranged the sheet, and smoothed
a crease or two out of the pillow. The bowed back and shoulders,
despite their suppleness and strength, had in them a pathos too deep
for tears: and Mackay, feeling himself dismissed, went noiselessly out.

For a long moment Desmond's unnatural stoicism held firm. Then, deep
down in him, something seemed to snap. With a dry, choking sob, he
flung himself on his knees beside the bed, and the waters came in even
unto his soul.

It seemed a thing incredible that one hour could hold such a store of
anguish. The half of his personality, the hidden life of heart and
spirit, seemed dead alrea