"That is the misfortune of it all," said Landon. "You see no change. Can your nursing be at fault—not from want of care, let me say at once, but from want of knowledge? Must we call in further advice in consultation?"
His face was white and haggard below the soiled bandage which crossed his forehead. The sharpness of his jaw, his sunken cheeks, made of his smile a very evil thing. She flinched before it.
"I cannot tell," she answered wearily.
"His movements, now?" grinned Landon. "Do they give no indication of his condition? Has he no conscious interests?"
The eyes below the bandage glittered and fear stabbed her suddenly. Were they betrayed?
She shook her head.
"You see for yourself," she answered, and made a gesture towards the motionless form on the pallet.
Landon laughed.
"No, I do not see," he said. "I am not a physician. I cannot walk to a bedside and deliver sentences of death or reprieves to life like the miracle mongers of Harley Street. Unconsciousness? How is it diagnosed? Sometimes by actual experiment in corpore vile, is it not?" He leaned over the bed. His hand slipped into a pocket and reappeared holding an open penknife. He thrust it suddenly into Aylmer's arm.
She gave a cry of indignation; she seized his hand and dragged him back.