Minutes passed while she stood there, minutes of tense listening, during which she scarcely seemed to breathe. Then very suddenly she heard a sound that set every nerve a-quiver—a groan that was more of weariness than pain, but such weariness as made her own heart throb in passionate sympathy.
Almost without knowing it, she turned the handle of the door, and opened it. A moment more, and she was in the room.
He was lying flat in the bed, his dark eyes staring upwards out of deep hollows that had become cruelly distinct. There was dumb endurance in every line of him. His mouth was hard set, the chin firm as granite. And even then in his utter helplessness there was about him a greatness, a mute, unconscious majesty, that caught her by the throat.
She went softly to the bedside.
He turned his head at her coming, not quickly, not with any eagerness of welcome; but with that in his eyes, a slow kindling, that seemed to surround her with the glow of a great warmth.
But when he spoke, it was upon no intimate subject. "Has Crowther gone?" he asked.
His voice was pitched very low. She saw that he spoke with deliberate quietness, as if he were training himself thereto.
"Yes," she made answer. "He wouldn't stay."
"He couldn't," said Piers. "He is going to be ordained tomorrow."
"Oh, is he?" she said in surprise. "He never told me!"