"Yes." Rex Payton lifted his cap from the table and prepared to take his leave. "Well, good-night, sir. I think I'll just step across and see how he's getting on. By Jove, what a magnificent night. It's as bright as day out here."
"Yes. Let me know in the morning how things are going."
"Right you are, sir." With another hasty good-night Rex turned and strode away across the compound in search of the doctor.
"Still asleep, thank God," was Morris' report. "Give you my word I dread his awakening."
"Seems a pity he's got to wake at all," said Payton moodily. "Couldn't you have given him a double dose while you were about it, and put the poor devil out of his misery?"
"That's not the way we work," returned the other dryly. "There's been one—miscalculation—to-day, and we can't afford any more. If he likes to do it himself, when he comes round, that's a different matter. I don't think he will, somehow. He doesn't strike me as that sort. He'll face it out, I believe, though it will go hard with him in the doing."
"When will he be himself again?"
"I don't know. I shall keep him under as long as I dare. After all"—the doctor, who prided himself on his lack of emotion, for once betrayed a glimpse of the real humanity beneath the rather grim exterior—"he'll have to serve a life-sentence in the way of regret, and one can't grudge the poor wretch an hour or two's Nirvana."
And:
"By God, sir, I agree with you," was all Rex Payton could find to say.