The coma lasted for a great part of the night. Sending the nurse to lie down, I sat and watched, chiefly because I had too much on my mind and in my heart to want to go to bed. Every two or three hours Cantyre stole in, in his dressing-gown, finding nothing he could do. Once or twice I was tempted to ask him what he thought of Christian’s talk, but, fearing to break the spell it might have wrought in him, I refrained. He himself didn’t mention it, nor did he seem to know that I had observed his impulsive, shaking hands.
On one of the occasions when he was with me Lovey opened his eyes suddenly, beginning to murmur something we couldn’t understand.
“What is it, old chap?” Cantyre questioned, bending over him and listening.
But Lovey was already articulating brokenly. It took two or three repetitions, or attempts at repetition, for Cantyre to be in a position to interpret.
“What’s he trying to say?” I inquired.
Cantyre pretended to arrange the bottles on the table beside the bed so as not to have to look at me.
“He says, or he’s doing his best to say, ‘I didn’t say nothink but what was for everybody’s good.’”
It was on my lips to retort, “Perhaps he didn’t.”
I left that, however, for Cantyre, who went back to his rooms without comment.
He returned in the small hours of the morning, and once more we sat, one on one side of the bed and the other on the other, in what was practically silence. All I could say of it was that it had become a sympathetic silence. Why it was sympathetic I didn’t know: but the unclassified perceptions told me that it was.