breath like a tiger snatching at meat. He accomplished exertions that
would have exhausted an athlete, and when he had saved his life in the
very instant of its loss, calling on Clara as on God, he would look at
Edwin for confirmation of his hope that he had escaped again. The
paroxysms continued, still growing more critical. Edwin was aghast at
his own helplessness. He could do absolutely naught. It was even
useless to hold the hand or to speak sympathy and reassurance. Darius
at the keenest moment of battle was too occupied with his enemy to hear
or feel the presence of a fellow-creature. He was solitary with his
unseen enemy, and if the room had been full of ministering angels he
would still have been alone and unsuccoured. He might have been sealed
up in a cell with his enemy who, incredibly cruel, withheld from him his
breath; and Edwin outside the cell trying foolishly to get in. He asked
for little; he would have been content with very little; but it was
refused him until despair had reached the highest agony.

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

FOUR.

"He's dying, I do believe," thought Edwin, and the wonder of this
nocturnal adventure sent tremors down his spine. He faced the
probability that at the next bout his father would be worsted. Should
he fetch Maggie and then go for the doctor? Heve had told him that it
would be `pretty bad,' and that nothing on earth could be done. No! He
would not fetch Maggie, and he would not go for the doctor. What use?
He would see the thing through. In the solemnity of the night he was
glad that an experience tremendous and supreme had been vouchsafed to
him. He knew now what the will to live was. He saw life naked,
stripped of everything unessential. He saw life and death together.
What caused his lip to curl when the thought of the Felons' dinner
flashed through his mind was the damned complacency of the Felons. Did
any of them ever surmise that they had never come within ten miles of
life itself, that they were attaching importance to the most futile
trifles? Let them see a human animal in a crisis of Cheyne-Stokes
breathing, and they would know something about reality! ... So this was
Cheyne-Stokes breathing, that rare and awful affliction! What was it?
What caused it? What controlled its frequency? No answer! Not only
could he do naught, he knew naught! He was equally useless and ignorant
before the affrig