"I will not fail you," promised Helen, choking back a sob of relief; and, trusting that the doctor did not see her quivering face, she added softly, "Heaven is merciful!"
She had been prepared for a change, but she was startled at the sight of Thurston. He lay with blanched patches in the paling bronze on his face, which had grown hollow and lined by pain. Still he was sleeping soundly, and did not move when she bent over him. She stooped further and touched his forehead with her lips, rose with the hot blood pulsing upwards from her neck, and stood trembling, while, either dreaming or stirred by some influence beyond man's knowledge, the sleeper smiled, murmuring, "Helen!"
It was daylight when Thurston awakened, and stared as if doubtful of his senses at his new nurse, until, approaching the frame of canvas whereon he lay, Helen, with a gentle touch, caressingly brushed the hair from his forehead.
"I have come to help you to get better. We cannot spare you, Geoffrey," she said simply.
The sick man asked no question nor betrayed further astonishment. He looked up gratefully into the eyes which met his own for a moment and grew downcast again. "Then I shall certainly cheat the doctors yet," he declared.
Under the circumstances his words were distinctly commonplace, but speech is not the sole means of communion between mind and mind, and for the present both were satisfied. Helen laughed and blushed happily when, as by an after thought, Geoffrey added, "It is really very kind of you."
"You must not talk," she admonished with a half-shy assumption of authority, strangely at variance with her former demeanor. "I shall call in my aunt with the elixir if you do."
Geoffrey smiled, but the brightness of his countenance was not accounted for by his answer: "I believe she has treated me with it once or twice already, and I still survive. In fact, I am inclined to think the doctor caught her red-handed on one occasion, and there was trouble."
After that Geoffrey recovered vigor rapidly, and the days passed quickly for Helen as she watched over him in the dilapidated frame house to which he had been removed after the accident. No word of love passed between them, nor was any word necessary. The man, still weak and languid, appeared blissfully contented to enjoy the present, and Helen, who was glad to see him do so, abided her time.
Meanwhile, supported by sheer force of will and a nervous exaltation, that would vanish utterly when the need for it ceased, Julius Savine, leaning on his foreman's arm, or sitting propped up in a rude jumper sleigh, directed operations in the cañon. He knew he was consuming the vitality that might purchase another few years' life in as many weeks of effort, but he desired only to see the work finished, and was satisfied to pay the price. He slept little and scarcely ate, holding on to his work with desperate purpose and living on cordials. Though progress was much slower than it would have been under Geoffrey's direction, he accomplished that purpose.