k of the San Michele hospice strike
three; she remembered that it had struck nine a few minutes after she
had sat down beside him.

Her anxiety awoke again now, and that delicious state of peace in
which she had passed the night began to seem like a past dream. In a
little more than an hour the dawn would begin to steal through the
outer blinds--the dawn she had watched for and longed for a thousand
times in five years of nursing. It would be unwelcome now; it would
mean the day, and the day could only mean for her the inevitable
question.

She sat down again to watch him, for she had risen nervously in the
first moment of returning distress; and she felt the cold of the early
morning stealing upon her as she became gradually sure that his
breathing was softer, and that from time to time a very slight
quivering of the closed lids proclaimed the gradual return of
consciousness. He would not wake in pain, or at least not in any acute
suffering; she knew that by experience, for in such cases the nerves
near the injured part generally remained paralysed for a long time.
But he would wake sleepily at first, wondering where he was, glancing
vaguely from one wall to another, from the foot of the bed or the
window to her own face, without recognising it or understanding
anything. That first stage might last a few minutes, or half-an-hour;
he might even fall asleep again and not wake till much later. But
sooner or later recognition would come, and with it a shock to him, a
sudden tension of the mind and nerves, under which he might attempt to
move suddenly in his bed, and that might be harmful, though she could
not tell how. She wondered whether it would not be her duty to leave
him before that moment. It was true that he would recognise the room
in which he had so often spent long hours with his brother; he would
know, as soon as he was conscious, that he was in the Convent hospital
and under the same roof with her; then he would ask for her. Perhaps
the surgeon would think it better that he should see her, but she
would not be left alone with him; possibly she might be asked by the
Mother Superior or by Monsignor Saracinesca, if he chanced to come
that morning, to use her influence with Giovanni in order that he
might submit to what alone could save him from death. It was going to
be one of the hardest days in all her life--would God not stay the dawn
one hour?

It was stealing through the shutters now, grey and soft, and