"I shall want help," he said, "but I don't want to alarm him--her husband. She is as brave as possible, but he--so I thought you----"
"Whom do you want?" asked Ned, going to the telephone.
Dr. Ramsay named a London specialist, and Ned looked up quickly.
"As bad as that?" he asked.
"As bad as it can be, I'm afraid," replied the doctor.
After the specialist had been summoned and duly bribed, there was nothing to do but sit and smoke again, since the memory of those beautiful eyes with the eternal hope of the world's immortality in them, haunted him beyond the cure of sleep. If he had been her husband, could he have done more, could he have felt more?
The London man arrived about one o'clock, and Ned, after the slight bustle of his coming and going upstairs, heard no more noise. The house seemed to settle down into the usual silence of night.
What was going on upstairs? Would she pass into the Unseen? Would she settle the question once and for all?
It was just as the red October sunrise was beginning to glow through the trees of the park, that Ned, standing at the window to watch it, heard the click of the door handle behind him, and turned to see the London doctor, a tall man with eyeglasses and a stoop.
"Well!" he said eagerly. "How is she?"