"Yes—yes. You will help me. You are one of those created to help. That is why you will be great. The great men are always—those who help."
The words came slowly, sometimes with difficulty, but the young medical student made no attempt to check them. He only sat with shrewd eyes upon the sick man's face and alert finger on his wrist, marking the waning strength while he listened. For he knew that the night was long.
Years afterwards it came to be said of him that his patients never died until his back was turned. It was not strictly true, but it conveyed something of the magnetism with which he wrought upon them. He knew the crucial moment by instinct, when to grapple and when to slacken his hold, and he never went by rule.
And so on that his second night of vigil by the side of a dying man, though he recognized speech as a danger, he made no effort to silence him. He knew that weariness of the spirit that finds no vent was a greater danger still.
"So you think I have a future before me?" he said.
"I am sure of it." Bertrand spoke with conviction. "It will not be an easy future, mon ami. Perhaps it will not be happy. Those who climb have no time to gather the flowers by the way. But—it will be great. You desire that, yes?"
"In a fashion," Max said. "I don't know that I consider greatness in itself as specially valuable. Do you?"
"I?" said Bertrand. "But I have passed all that. There was a time when ambition was to me as the breath of life. I thought of nothing else. And then"—his voice dropped a little—"there came a greater thing—the greatest of all. And I knew that I had climbed above ambition. I knew success and fame as a procession that passes—that passes—the mirage in the desert—the dream in the midst of our great Reality. I knew all this before my ruin came. It was as if a light had suddenly been held up, and I saw the work of my life as pictures in the sand. Then the great tide rushed up, and all was washed away. But yet"—his voice vibrated, he looked at Max and smiled—"the light remained. For a time, indeed, I was blind, but the light came back to me. And I know now that it was always there."
He paused, and turned his head sharply.
"What is it?" said Max.