“He will be feeble. I shall give him more medicine, and he will sleep again.”
He rose and busied himself at the fire. Soon he approached her, bringing the gold-incrusted teapot and a small, handleless cup.
She drank thirstily, filling and emptying the cup many times. When she was done, she made as if to go. “I shall see that everything is all right at home,” she told him. “After that, I shall come back.” She stooped and kissed her husband tenderly.
Fong Wu opened the door for her, and she passed out. In the road, unhitched, but waiting, stood the mustang. She mounted and rode away.
When she returned, not long afterward, she was a new woman. She had bathed her face and donned a fresh waist. Her eyes were alight, and the scarlet was again flaming in her cheeks. Almost cheerfully, and altogether hopefully, she resumed her post at the ironing-table.
It was late in the afternoon before Barrett woke. But he made no attempt to get up, and would not eat. Fong Wu administered another dose of herbs, and without heeding his patient’s expostulations. The latter, after seeking his wife’s hand, once more sank into sleep.
Just before sunset, Fong Wu, who scorned to rest, prepared supper. Gratefully Mrs. Barrett partook of some tender chicken and rice cakes. When darkness shut down, they took up their second long vigil.
But it was not the vigil of the previous night. She was able to think of other things than her husband’s condition and the doom that, of a sudden, had menaced her happiness. Her spirits having risen, she was correspondingly impatient of a protracted, oppressive stillness, and looked about for an interruption, and for diversion. Across from her, a Celestial patrician in his blouse of purple silk and his red-buttoned cap, sat Fong Wu. Consumed with curiosity—now that she had time to observe him closely—she longed to lift the yellow, expressionless mask from his face—a face which might have patterned that of an Oriental sphinx. At midnight, when he approached the table to satisfy himself of Barrett’s progress, and to assure her of it, she essayed a conversation.
Glancing up at his laden shelves, she said, “I have been noticing your medicines, and how many kinds there seem to be.”
“For each ailment that is visited upon man, earth offers a cure,” he answered. “Life would be a mock could Death, unchallenged, take it.”