hunger for the doctor.

Through the wall came once more the faint sound of the Hungarian
Rhapsody, astonishingly rapid and brilliant. She set her teeth to endure
its unconscious message of the vast indifference of life to death.

The organism stirred, and May watched the deathly face for a sign. The
eyes opened and stared at her in agonized bewilderment. The lips tried
to speak, and failed.

'It's all right, darling,' she said softly. 'You're in your own bed. The
doctor will be here directly. Drink this.'

She gave him some brandy-and-water, and they looked at each other. He
was no longer Edward Norris, the finely regulated intelligence, the
masterful volition, the conqueror of the world and of a woman; but
merely the embodiment of a frightened, despairing, flickering,
hysterical will-to-live, which glanced in terror at the corners of the
room as though it saw fate there. And beneath her intense solicitude was
the instinctive feeling, which hurt her, but which she could not
dismiss, of her measureless, dominating superiority. With what glad
relief would she have changed places with him!

'I'm dying, May,' he murmured at length, with a sigh. 'Why doesn't the
doctor come?'

'He is coming,' she replied soothingly. 'You'll be better soon.'

But his effort in speaking obliged her to use the sponge again, and he
saw it, and drew another sigh, more mortal than the first.

'Oh! I'm dying,' he repeated.

'Not you, Ted!' And her smile cost her an awful pang.

'I am. I know it.' This time he spoke with sad resignation. 'You must
face it. And--listen.'

'What, dear?'

A physical sensation of sickness came over her. She could not disguise
from herself the fact that he was dying. The warped and pallid face, the
panic-struck eyes, the sweat, the wound in the neck, the damp hands
nervously pulling the hem of the sheet--these indications were not to be
gainsaid. The truth was too horrible to grasp; she wanted to put it away
from her. 'This calamity cannot happen to me!' she thought urgently, and
all the while she knew that it was happening to her.

He collected the feeble remnant of his powers by an immense effort, and
began to speak, slowly and fragmentarily, and with such weakness that
she could only catch his words by putting her ear to his mouth. The
restless hands dropped the sheet and took the end of the black scarf.

'You'll be comfortable--for money,' he said. 'Will made.... It's not
that. It's ... I must tell y