heir eyes met, and she thought she read in his a sudden divination of
her inmost thoughts. The discovery electrified her flagging strength,
restoring her to immediate clearness of brain. She saw the gulf of
self-betrayal over which she had hung, and the nearness of the peril
nerved her to a last effort of dissimulation.

"I can't...talk of it...any longer," she faltered, letting her tears
flow, and turning on him a face of pure womanly weakness.

Wyant looked at her without answering. Did he distrust even these plain
physical evidences of exhaustion, or was he merely disappointed in her,
as in one whom he had believed to be above the emotional failings of her
sex?

"You're over-tired," he said coldly. "Take tonight to rest. Miss Mace
can replace you for the next few hours--and I may need you more
tomorrow."

XXIX

FOUR more days had passed. Bessy seldom spoke when Justine was with her.
She was wrapped in a thickening cloud of opiates--morphia by day,
bromides, sulphonal, chloral hydrate at night. When the cloud broke and
consciousness emerged, it was centred in the one acute point of bodily
anguish. Darting throes of neuralgia, agonized oppression of the breath,
the diffused misery of the whole helpless body--these were reducing
their victim to a mere instrument on which pain played its incessant
deadly variations. Once or twice she turned her dull eyes on Justine,
breathing out: "I want to die," as some inevitable lifting or
readjusting thrilled her body with fresh pangs; but there were no signs
of contact with the outer world--she had ceased even to ask for
Cicely....

And yet, according to the doctors, the patient held her own. Certain
alarming symptoms had diminished, and while others persisted, the
strength to fight them persisted too. With such strength to call on,
what fresh agonies were reserved for the poor body when the narcotics
had lost their power?

That was the question always before Justine. She never again betrayed
her fears to Wyant--she carried out his orders with morbid precision,
trembling lest any failure in efficiency should revive his suspicions.
She hardly knew what she feared his suspecting--she only had a confused
sense that they were enemies, and that she was the weaker of the two.

And then the anaesthetics began to fail. It was the sixteenth day since
the accident, and the resources of alleviation were almost exhausted. It
was not sure, even now, that Bessy was going to die