So the slow, weary night dragged away. The house surgeon looked in once, bent over the patient a moment, and, without examination, went away.
The morning broke, and through the walls the dim, murmurous hum of street traffic penetrated in a muffled whisper. Then the gray of the late dawn crept about the room, noiseless-footed, like one walking over graves. Suddenly Lois, who had been sitting with closed eyes, felt a touch on her shoulder. It was Margaret, and she pointed silently to Daunt. Lois started forward with a shrinking fear that the end had come unperceived, but a glance reassured her. The rigid outlines of his features seemed to have relaxed; an indefinable something, a warmth, a tinge, a flexibility seemed to have fallen upon the drawn cheeks. It was something scarce tangible enough to be noted; something evasive, and yet, to Lois’s trained senses, unmistakable. It was a light loosening of the grip of Death, a tentative withdrawing of the forces of the destroyer.
Lois turned with a quick and silent gesture, and the two girls looked at each other steadfastly. Into Margaret’s eyes sprang a trembling, eager light of joy.
“We mustn’t hope too much, dear,” Lois whispered, “but I think—I think that there is a little change. Wait until I call Dr. Irwin.”
The house surgeon bent over the cot with his finger upon Daunt’s pulse. “This is another one on Faulkner,” he said. “It beats all how things will go. Said he’d give him twelve hours, did he? Well, this patient has his own ideas about that. He evidently has marvellous recuperative powers or else the age of miracles isn’t past. Better watch this case very carefully and report to me every hour or so. You can count,” he smiled at Lois, “on being mighty unpopular with Faulkner. He doesn’t like to have his opinions reversed this way, and he is pretty sure to lay it on the nurse.”
As the doctor disappeared, all the strength which Margaret had summoned to her aid seemed to vanish in one great wave of weakening which overspread her spirit. Everything swam before her eyes. She sank upon the chair and laid her arms outstretched upon the table. Then she slowly dropped her head upon them.
XXI.
It was late afternoon. The fiery sun had just dipped below the jagged Adirondack hill-peaks to the south, still casting a carmine glow between the scattered and low-boughed pines. The square window of the high-ceiled sanitarium room was specked with pale-appearing stars, and the snow-draped slopes beneath showed dim in the elusive beauty that lurks in soft color and low tones. Daunt lay silent, facing the window, and Margaret, tired from romping with the doctor’s children, rested on a low hassock beside his reclining chair. Slowly the carmine faded from the snow, and the hastening winter-dark trailed its violescent gossamer up and down the rock-clefts and across the purpling hollows.