“He is not suffering, then?” asked Shannon, trembling.
“Not now. For his sake, I hope he won’t recover consciousness until after the doctor comes.”
Shannon Burke staggered and would have fallen had she not grasped the frame of the door.
It was not long before the doctor came, and then she went back up the stairs to her rooms, still trembling. She took the filled hypodermic syringe from her handkerchief and looked at it. Then she carried it into the bathroom.
“You can never tempt me again,” she said aloud, as she emptied its contents into the lavatory. “Oh, dear God, I love him!”
CHAPTER XVII
That night Shannon insisted upon taking her turn at Custer’s bedside, and she was so determined that they could not refuse her. He was still suffering, but not so acutely. The doctor had left morphine, with explicit directions for its administration should it be required. The burns, while numerous, and reaching from his left ankle to his cheek, were superficial, and, though painful, not necessarily dangerous.
He slept but little, and when he was awake he wanted to talk. He told her about Grace. It was his first confidence—a sweetly sad one—for he was a reticent man concerning those things that were nearest his heart and consequently the most sacred to him. He had not heard from Grace for some time, and her mother had had but one letter—a letter that had not sounded like Grace at all. They were anxious about her.
“I wish she would come home!” he said wistfully. “You would like her, Shannon. We could have such bully times together! I think I would be content here if Grace were back; but without her it seems very different, and very lonely. You know we have always been together, all of us, since we were children—Grace, Eva, Guy, and I; and now that you are here it would be all the better, for you are just like us. You seem like us, at least—as if you had always lived here, too.”