least, poor soul, he was at peace. At least he had a respite from that invisible and pitiless foe that she knew he fought. She moved him a little on the lounge, and sat down on the edge of it and stared into his face. It had never seemed more beautiful in spite of the bluish hollows under the eyes.
She wondered when he had taken the drug, whether it was after she started to play, and if so why then? Had the thought of her been too much for him? Something happened to her as she sat there looking at him, a crisis in the evolution of feeling. But she was not conscious of it till afterwards. She was caught now by a flood of pity and affection. The impulse came to her to lie down with him, to be with him when he waked, and to help him to fight back to himself. She went out to the supper tray, and drank a glass of wine. She put out the candles in the study, and saw that the fire was safe.
He did not stir as she moved him to make room for herself. She thought she could stay there all night. But her mood of passionate affection wore itself out as she lay there uncomfortable and fiercely awake, listening to the storm break upon the house. And there was something uncanny about Dane, not himself, lying there beside her, like a dead man. The hot air of the scented room suffocated her. Something absolutely alien to her health and balance irritated her. The lashing of the sleet upon the roof, and the queer straining sounds made by the creepers fighting for their hold against the wind kept her nerves continually on the jump. And she got a hopeless feeling about her ability to help him when he woke.
After all, she was doing him no good by being there. And she had satisfied the sacrificial mood she had been in. With more of a dull dismay in her mind than anything else she got up about one o’clock and went back to
