too exhausted for
any sustained effort of will; and her glance wandered back to, and
followed with agonised comprehension, the formless, motionless
elevation and depression of that same sheet towards the foot of the
bed.

The air of the room seemed to grow more oppressive, the silence to
deepen, and with it the terrible tension of her mind increased.
Suddenly she started to her feet. The logs burning in the grate had
fallen together with a crash, sending a rush of ruddy flame and an
innumerable army of hurrying sparks up the wide chimney. All the
mouldings of the ceiling--all the crossing bars and sinuous lines of
the richly-worked pattern, all the depending bosses and roses of it,
all the foliations of the deep cornice--sprang into bold relief,
outlined, splashed, and stained with living scarlet. And this universal
redness of carpet, curtains, furniture, and now of ceiling, even of
white-draped bed, suggested to Katherine's distracted fancy another
thing--unseen, yet known during her other hour of waiting--namely
blood.

Roused by the crash of the falling logs and the rustle of Katherine's
garments as she sprang up, Richard Calmady opened his eyes. For a few
seconds his glance wavered in vague distress and perplexity. Then as
fuller consciousness returned of how it all was with him, with a slight
lifting of the eyebrows his glance steadied upon Katherine and he
smiled.

"Ah! my poor Kitty," he whispered, "it takes a long time, doesn't it,
this business of dying?"

Katherine's evil fancies vanished. As soon as the demand for action
came she grew calm and sane. The ceiling and sheets were white again
and her mind was clear.

"Are you easy, my dearest?" she asked; "in less pain?"

"No," he said, "no, I'm not in pain. But everything seems to sink away
from me, and I float right out. It's all dream and mist--except--except
just now your face."

Katherine's lips quivered too much for speech. She moved swiftly across
to the what-not at the head of the bed. If he did not suffer, there
could be no selfishness, surely, in trying to keep death at bay for a
little space yet? But, alas, with what grotesquely paltry and
inadequate weapons are all--even the most gallant--reduced to fighting
death at the last! Here, on the one hand, a half wine-glass of
champagne in a china feeding-cup, with a teapot-like spout to it, or a
few spoonfuls of jelly, backed by the passion of a woman's heart. And,
on the other hand, ranged again