ellent opportunity, such as Maggie loved, to prove that
she was equal to a situation. Maggie would not permit Mrs Hamps to be
sent for. Nor would she permit Mrs Nixon to remain up. She was
excited and very fatigued, and she meant to manage the night with the
sole aid of Jane. It was even part of her plan that Edwin should go to
bed as usual--poor Edwin, with all the anxieties of business upon his
head! But she had not allowed for Edwin's conscience, nor foreseen what
the doctor would say to him privately. Edwin had learnt from the
doctor--a fact which the women had not revealed to him--that his father
during the day had shown symptoms of `Cheyne-Stokes breathing,' the
final and the worst phenomenon of his disease; a phenomenon, too,
interestingly rare. The doctor had done all that could be done by
injections, and there was absolutely nothing else for anybody to do
except watch.

"I shall come in in the night," Maggie whispered.

Behind them the patient vaguely stirred and groaned in his recess.

"You'll do no such thing," said Edwin shortly. "Get all the sleep you
can."

"But Nurse has to have a fresh poultice every two hours," Maggie
protested.

"Now, look here!" Edwin was cross. "Do show a little sense. Get--
all--the--sleep--you--can. We shall be having you ill next, and then
there'll be a nice kettle of fish. I won't have you coming in here. I
shall be perfectly all right. Now!" He gave a gesture that she should
go at once.

"You won't be fit for the shop to-morrow."

"Damn the shop!"

"Well, you know where everything is." She was resigned. "If you want
to make some tea--"

"All right, all right!" He forced himself to smile.

She departed, and he shut the door.

"Confounded nuisance women are!" he thought, half indulgently, as he
turned towards the bed. But it was his conscience that was a confounded
nuisance. He ought never to have allowed himself to be persuaded to go
to the banquet. When his conscience annoyed him, it was usually Maggie
who felt the repercussion.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

TWO.

Darius was extremely ill. Every part of his physical organism was
deranged and wearied out. His features combined the expression of
intense fatigue with the sinister liveliness of an acute tragic
apprehension. His failing faculties were kept horribly alert by the
fear of what was going to happen to him next. So much that was
appa