"Was--she--hurt?"

"No," said the blue and white woman, very kindly. "Only slightly bruised."

The next day he summoned her again. As before, she bent very low to catch the gasping words: "Where is-my--father?"

"He had to go to town on business. He will come back just as soon as he can."

"He-is--dead," said Allison, with difficulty. "Nothing else--could take- him-away--now."

"No," she a.s.sured him, "you must believe me. He's all right. Everybody else is all right and we hope you soon will be."

"No use--talking of--it," he breathed, hoa.r.s.ely. "I know."

Singly, by twos and even threes, the strange men continued to come from the City. Allison submitted wearily to the painful examinations that seemed so unnecessary. Some of the men seemed kind, even sympathetic.

Others were cold and impa.s.sive, like so many machines. Still others, and these were in the majority, were almost brutal.

It was one of the latter sort who one day drew a chair up to the side of the bed with a sc.r.a.ping noise that made the rec.u.mbent figure quiver from head to foot. The man's face was almost colourless, his bulging blue eyes were cold and fish-like, distorted even more by the strong lenses of his spectacles.

"Better have it over with," he suggested. "I can do it now."

"Do what?" asked Allison, with difficulty.

"Amputate your hand. There's no chance."

The blue and white young woman then on duty came forward. "I beg your pardon, Doctor, but Colonel Kent left strict orders not to operate without his consent."

The strange man disdained to answer the nurse, but turned to Allison again. "Do you know where your father can be reached by wire?"

"My father--is dead," Allison insisted. He closed his eyes and would answer no more questions. In the next room, he heard the nurse and the doctor talking in low tones that did not carry. Only one word rose above the murmur: "delusion."

Allison repeated it to himself as he sank into the darkness again, wondering what it meant and of whom they were speaking.

Slowly he recovered from the profound shock, but his hand did not improve. He had an idea that the ceaseless bandaging and unbandaging were dangerous as well as painful, but said nothing. He knew that his career had come to its end before it had really begun, but it did not seem to affect him in any way. He considered it unemotionally and impersonally, when he thought of it at all.

Two more men came together. One was brutal, the other merely cold. They shook their heads and went away. A few days later, a man of the rare sort came; a gentle, kindly, sympathetic soul, who seemed human and real.

After the examination was finished, Allison asked, briefly: "Any chance?"

The kindly man hesitated for an instant, then told the truth. "I'm afraid not."

The nurse happened to be out of the room, none the less, Allison motioned to him to come closer. Almost in a whisper he said: "Can you give me anything that will make me strong enough to write half a dozen lines?"

"Could no one else write it for you?"

"No one."

"Couldn't I take the message?"

"Could anyone take a message for me to the girl I was going to marry-- now?"

"I understand," said the other, gently. "We'll see. You must make it very brief."

When the nurse came back, they gave him a pencil, propped a book up before him, and fastened a sheet of paper to it by a rubber band. After the powerful stimulant the doctor administered had begun to take effect, Allison managed to write, in a very shaky, almost illegible hand:

"MY DEAREST:

"My left hand will have to come off. As I can't ask you to marry a cripple, the only honourable thing for me to do is to release you from our engagement. Don't think I blame you. Good-bye, darling, and may G.o.d bless you.

"A. K."

The effort exhausted him greatly, but the thing was done. The nurse folded it, put it into an envelope, sealed it, and took the pencil from him.

"You'll let me address it, won't you?" she asked.

"Yes. Miss Isabel Ross. Anyone in the house can tell you where--anyone will take it to her. Thank you," he added, speaking to the doctor.

That night, for the first time, the situation began to affect him personally. In the hours after midnight, as the forces of the physical body ebbed toward the lowest point, those of the mind seemed to increase. Staring at the low night light, that by its feeble flicker exorcised the thousand phantoms that beset him, he could think clearly.

In a rocking chair, across the room, the night nurse dozed, with a white shawl wrapped around her. He could hear her deep, regular breathing as she slept.

His father was dead--he knew that for an absolute fact, and wondered why the two kind women and the endless, varying procession of men should so persistently lie to him about this when they were willing to tell him the truth about everything else.

He also knew that, sooner or later, his left hand would be amputated and that his career would come to an inglorious end--indeed, the end had already come. The ordeal painfully shadowed upon his horizon was only the final seal. Fortunately there was money enough for everything--he would want pitifully little for the rest of his life.

His life stretched out before him in a waste of empty years. He was thirty, now, and his father had lived until well past seventy; might have lived many years more had he not died when his heart broke over the misfortunes of his idolised son. He could remember the rumble of the carriage wheels the night of the funeral. The nurse had dozed in her chair just as she was dozing now, while downstairs they carried his father out of the house in a black casket and buried him. It was all as clear as though it had happened yesterday, instead of ages ago.

A clock, somewhere near by, chimed three quick, silvery strokes. With the last stroke, the clock in the kitchen struck three, also, in a different tone and with an annoying briskness of manner. As the echo died away, the old grandfather's clock on the landing boomed out three portentously solemn chimes. It was followed almost immediately by a cheery, impertinent little clock, insisting that it was four and almost time for sunrise.

The nurse stirred in her chair, yawned, and came over to the bed. She straightened the blankets with a practised hand, changed his hot pillow for a fresh one, brought him a drink of cool water, and went back to her chair without having said a word. The gentle ministry comforted him insensibly. What magic there was in the touch of a woman's hand! But, in the long grey years ahead, there would be no woman, unless--Isabel--

Sometime that afternoon, or early in the evening, she had received his note. It was not strange that they had not allowed her to come to see him, because no one had seen him but the doctors and nurses. Even Aunt Francesca, whom he had known all his life, had not darkened his open door.

But now, Isabel would come--she could not help but come. With the pa.s.sing of the fateful hour, strength began to return slowly. She would come to-morrow, and every tick of the clock brought to-morrow a second nearer.

A steadily increasing warmth came into his veins and thawed the ice around his heart. The cold hand that had held it so long mercifully loosened its fingers. He turned his face toward the Eastern window, that he might watch for the first faint glow.

A single long, deepening shadow struck across the far horizon like the turning out of a light. Almost immediately, the distant East brightened.

Day was coming--the sun, and Isabel.

With the first hint of colour, hope dawned in his soul, changing to certainty as the light increased. It was not in the way of things that he, who had always had everything, should at one fell stroke be left desolate. Out of the wreckage there was one thing he might keep--Isabel.

He laughed at the thought that she would accept her release. What would he have done he asked himself, were it she instead of him? Could mutilation, or even death, change his love for her? He was equally sure that hers could not be changed.

It was fortunate that she was saved--that it was he instead of Isabel.

She had pretty hands--such dear hands as men have loved and kissed since, back in the garden, the First Woman gave hers to the First Man, that he might lead her wheresoever he would.

In the midst of the wreckage, he perceived a divine compensation, for Isabel would not fail him--she could not fail him now. Transfigured by tenderness, her coldness changed to the utmost yielding, to-morrow would bring him his G.o.ddess, a deeply-loving woman at last.

"How she will come to me," he said to himself, feeling, in fancy, her soft arms around him, and her warm lips on his, while the life-current flowed steadily from her to him and made him a man again, not a weakling. His heart beat with a joy that was almost pain, for he could feel her intoxicating nearness even now. Perhaps her sweet eyes would overflow with the greatness of her love and her tears would fall upon his face when she knelt beside him, to lay her head upon his breast.