The doctor paused, staring at the fire. He shrugged his shoulders, and went on: "I'd have stopped her fury if I could! A dying man is not the same as the live animal, that he must needs be wrangled over! And suffering's sacred, even to us doctors. I could hear their voices outside. Heaven knows what they said to each other. And there lay Godwin with his white face and his black hair—deathly still—fine-looking fellow he always was! Then I saw that he was coming to! The women had begun again outside—first, the wife, sharp and scornful; then the other, hushed and slow. I saw Godwin lift his finger and point it at the door. I went out, and said to the woman, 'Dr. Godwin wishes to see you; please control yourself.'
"We went back into the room. The wife followed. But Godwin had lost consciousness again. They sat down, those two, and hid their faces. I can see them now, one on each side of the bed, their eyes covered with their hands, each with her claim on him, all murdered by the other's presence; each with her torn love. H'm! What they must have suffered, then! And all the time the child crying—the child of one of them, that might have been the other's!"
The doctor was silent, and the old Director turned towards him his white-bearded, ruddy face, with a look as if he were groping in the dark.
"Just then, I remember," the doctor went on suddenly, "the bells of St. Jude's close by began to peal out for the finish of a wedding. That brought Godwin back to life. He just looked from one woman to the other with a queer, miserable sort of smile, enough to make your heart break. And they both looked at him. The face of the wife—poor thing!—was as bitter hard as a cut stone, but she sat there, without ever stirring a finger. As for the other woman—I couldn't look at her. He beckoned to me; but I couldn't catch his words, the bells drowned them. A minute later he was dead.
"Life's a funny thing! You wake in the morning with your foot firm on the ladder—One touch, and down you go! You snuff out like a candle. And it's lucky when your flame goes out, if only one woman's flame goes out too.
"Neither of those women cried. The wife stayed there by the bed. I got the other one away to her carriage, down the street.—And so she was there to-day! That explains, I think, the look you saw."
The doctor ceased, and in the silence the old Director nodded. Yes! That explained the look he had seen on the face of that unknown woman, the deep, unseizable, weird look. That explained the look he had seen on the wife's face at the funeral twenty years ago!
And peering wistfully, he said:
"They looked—they looked—almost triumphant!"
Then, slowly, he rubbed his hands over his knees, with the secret craving of the old for warmth.