l of the girl's face was drawn, and deep lines of anxious
thought had broken up the smooth expanse of her forehead. Her eyes
seemed to be straining out of their sockets, and the whites were
bloodshot. She did not speak, but her look displayed an anguish
unspeakable. Her eyes were turned upon the face of the prostrate man;
she did not appear to see the minister. Her look suggested some mute
question, which seemed to pass from her troubled eyes to the silent
figure. Watching her, Danvers understood that, for the present, it
would be dangerous to break the dreadful silence that held her. He
stooped again and drew back the waistcoat and began to cut away the
under-garments from Grey's chest.

Swiftly as the minister's deft fingers moved about the man's body, his
thoughts travelled faster. He was not a man given to morbid
sentimentality; his calling demanded too much of the practical side of
human nature. He was there to aid his flock, materially as well as
spiritually, but at the moment he felt positively sick in the stomach
with sorrow and pity for the woman who stood like a statue on the
other side of what he knew to be this man's deathbed. He dared not
look over at her again. Instead, he bent his head lower and
concentrated his, mind on the work before him.

The silence continued, broken only by an occasional heavy gasp of
breath from the girl. The dripping shirt was cut clear of the man's
chest, and the woollen under-shirt was treated in a similar manner.
The exposed flesh was crimson with the blood which was slowly oozing
from a small wound a few inches higher up in the chest than where the
heart was so faintly beating. One glance sufficed to tell the parson
that medical aid would be useless. The wound was through the lungs.

For a moment he hesitated. His better sense warned him to keep
silence, but pity urged him to speak. Pity swayed him with the
stronger hand.

"He is alive," he said. And the next moment he regretted his words.

The tension of the girl's dreadful expression relaxed instantly. It
was as the lifting of a dead weight which had crushed her heart within
her. She had been numbed, paralyzed. Actual suffering had not been
hers, she had experienced a suspension of feeling which had resulted
from the shock. But that suspension was far more dreadful than the
most acute suffering. Her whole soul had asked her senses, "What is
it?" and the waiting for the answer had been to her in the nature of a
blank.