"We talk as if she were not dying."
"She will not die," said Mark solemnly. At that moment he was sure that Betty would live, must live, because (and the reason illumines the dark places through which Mark had passed), because it would be so much better for her if she died.
Just then the consulting surgeon arrived. Archibald took him upstairs, and returned to Mark within a quarter of an hour, saying that the case was even more serious than had been supposed.
"Drax sentenced me to death," said Mark, "but I'm alive and strong."
Archibald fell on his knees in an agony of supplication. Mark watched him. Suddenly the husband looked up.
"In the name of God, pray," he entreated. "You are a better man than I—pray!"
But Mark remained standing.
He desired to pray, but above this desire and dominating it was the vivid horror of that evil spirit, which had so lately fled and which might come back. A sense of unworthiness prostrated his spirit, but not his body. He glanced at Archibald, and left the room.
Outside, the gas in the hall and passages seemed to be struggling helplessly against the light of breaking day. Familiar objects—furniture belonging to the Admiral—loomed large out of a sickly, yellow mist. Mark found himself staring blankly at an ancient clock ticking with loud and exasperating monotony. It had so ticked away the seconds, the minutes, the hours of more than a hundred years!
The next objects that caught his eye were two umbrellas. They stood side by side, curiously contrasted: the one a dainty trifle of violet silk and crystal, encircled with a gold band; and the other large and massive with a symbolic shepherd's crook as a handle. These arrested Mark's attention. He remembered that he had chaffed Betty about her umbrella, telling her that it was too smart for a parson's wife, and absurdly frail as a protection against anything save a passing shower. She retorted that a wise woman never braves a storm, and then she had said with the smile he knew so well: "My umbrella, which, after all, is an en tout cas, is just like me: made for sunshine rather than rain."