“He is a little better, I think; he opened his eyes just now.”
“He is not seriously hurt,” Mr. Sabin said; “there may be some slight concussion, nothing more. The question is, first, what to do with him, and secondly, how to make the best use of the time which must elapse before he will be well enough to go home.”
She looked at him now in horror. He was always like this, unappalled by anything which might happen, eager only to turn every trick of fortune to his own ends. Surely his nerves were of steel and his heart of iron.
“I think,” she said, “that I should first make sure that he is likely to recover at all.”
Mr. Sabin answered mechanically, his thoughts seemed far away.
“His recovery is a thing already assured,” he said. “His skull was too hard to crack; he will be laid up for an hour or two. What I have to decide is how to use that hour or two to the best possible advantage.”
She looked away from him and shuddered. This passionate absorption of all his energies into one channel had made a fiend of the man. Her slowly growing purpose took to itself root and branch, as she knelt by the side of the young Englishman, who only a few moments ago had seemed the very embodiment of all manly vigour.
Mr. Sabin stood up. He had arrived at a determination.
“Helène,” he said, “I am going away for an hour, perhaps two. Will you take care of him until I return?”
“Yes.”