"But is it death?" persisted Avery wildly.
"I do not know," said Dr. Thorne.
"Do you give her up?"
"No!" thundered Dr. Thorne again. "The drowned have been resuscitated after six hours," he added between his teeth. "That's the latest contention."
At this moment a messenger summoned by telephone from the corner pharmacy arrived, running, and pealed and thundered at the door. Some one laid upon the bed within the doctor's reach a small pasteboard box. He opened it in silence, and took from it a tiny crystal or shell of thin glass. This he broke upon a handkerchief, and held the linen cautiously to Jean's face. A powerful, pungent odor filled the room. Avery felt his head whirl as he breathed it. The doctor removed the handkerchief and scrutinized Jean's face. Neither hope nor despair could be detected on his own. Without a word he went to work again.
Not discarding, but not now depending altogether on the aid of warmth, stimulants, and the remedies upon which he had been trained to rely in his duels with death, the physician turned the force of his will and his skill in the direction of another class of experiments.
So far as he could, and at such disadvantage as he must, he put certain of the modern processes of artificial respiration to the proof. He did not allow himself to be hampered in this desperate expedient by an element of danger involved in lifting the patient's arms above her head; for Jean had passed far beyond all ordinary perils. Obstacles seemed to serve only to whip his audacity. His countenance grew dogged and grim. He worked with an ineffable gentleness, and with an indomitable determination that gave a definite grandeur to his bearing.
Avery looked on with dull, blind eyes; he felt that he was witnessing an unsuccessful attempt at miracle. He began to resent it as an interference with the sanctity of death. He began to wish that the doctor would let his wife alone. The clock on the mantel struck twelve. Pink had fallen asleep, and somebody had carried her back to her own bed. The two women huddled together by the door. The physician had ceased to speak to any person. His square jaws came together like steel machinery that had been locked. In his eyes immeasurable pity gathered; but no one could see his eyes. The clock timed the quarter past midnight.
Avery had now moved round to the other side of the bed; he buried his face in his wife's pillow, and, unobserved, put out his hand to touch her. He reached and clasped her thin left hand on which her wedding-ring hung loosely. Her fingers were not very cold,—he had often known them colder when she was ill,—and as his hand closed over them it seemed to him for a wild instant that hers melted within it; that it relaxed, or warmed beneath his touch.
"I am going mad," he thought. He raised his head. The clock called half-past twelve. Dr. Thorne was holding the little mirror at Jean's lips again. A silvery film—as delicate as mist, as mysterious as life, as mighty as joy—clouded it from end to end.