Miss Waters reflected. Then she remembered often having seen in moving pictures flasks being held to the lips of injured persons. So Rosaleen lifted up his head and Miss Waters poured a little brandy down his throat. He opened his great black eyes and fixed her with a sombre, dreadful stare.
“Oh, mercy!” she cried.
Rosaleen hastily laid his head back on the pillow and came round to look at him.
“Mr. Iverson!” she cried. “Are you better?”
He groaned and flung his arms across his face. And began to sob in a hoarse, heart-rending voice.
“Oh, Lawrence dear!” she cried, kneeling down beside him. “What is the trouble? What can I do for you?”
His great body was shaking with the violence of his sobs. Rosaleen put her arms about him.
“Please don’t cry!” she entreated.
She tried gently to take his arms away, so that she could see his face, but he resisted, and she was afraid to persist, for fear of hurting his bandaged wrist. She laid her cheek against his hands and clasped him tighter, suffering with him, in anguish at his despair.
“Tell me!” she said. “What can I do for you?”