"Bachelors' Flat," in Collins Street, was peculiarly silent. The customary visitors paused in the hall downstairs and did not venture to ascend to the third floor of the mansions. Merely a sympathetic message to the caretaker, a few parting words of hope, or a shake of the head, and they passed on into the busy world outside.
In the flat itself men and women walked with quiet feet and spoke to one another in whispers, saving in the darkened room where Desmond O'Connor chattered unceasingly, and now shouted or laughed in the wildness of delirium. A nurse was installed in his room, a quiet and gentle little lady, never hurried yet never slow; always patient, with a coaxing manner and a soft voice. When he was sensible Desmond called her the Angel of Mercy; in his delirium he spoke to her always as Sylvia. Even in his wildest ravings, when he muttered and shouted sentences he had heard from the lips of others and never sullied his own lips with, he was always respectful to her.
Kathleen O'Connor and Molly Healy were with her as untrained auxiliaries to take her place and implicitly follow her directions when sleep could no longer be denied. To them she gave the highest praise in her power when she remarked approvingly:
"You should have been nurses, both of you."
Denis Quirk had resigned his room to the nurses, and when he slept stretched himself out on the couch in the dining-room. He was watching anxiously for his friend's moment of softening when Desmond would need and ask for a priest. By a special arrangement the Archbishop had granted to Father Healy the permission to attend Desmond, if he desired a confessor. Then, day or night, as soon as the telephone carried the expected message, the parish priest of Grey Town was prepared to hasten in a motor car to Melbourne.
But the fever had gone on to the dread third week, where death crouches beside the patient's sick bed, and Desmond had made no sign. The doctor came and went frequently, having the brand of anxiety plainly printed on his face; the nurse had curtailed her hours of sleep to the minimum of possibility, and the message had not been sent.
"Why will he not surrender?" sighed Kathleen O'Connor. "I have asked him to see Father Healy, and he always answers, 'No.'"
"The good God is just trying us," said Molly Healy. "He wishes to see how far our faith will go. But I am hoping that mine will stretch a little further yet; for it needs to be elastic in times like this."
Denis Quirk came in from his work, a little older and more tired-looking than he had been, but just as warm-hearted and humorous as when life was moving like a well-oiled machine.
"Any improvement?" he asked.