"You look——"
"It's the daylight and the sickly candle," Trevelyan answered shortly as he rose to leave. "McHennessy, here, has put in a night of it. See you later."
Once outside in the narrow passage Trevelyan leaned up stupidly against the wall. His head was hurting him violently and was colder than the hand he pressed against it, and a sudden deadly nausea seized him. He stared hard at the wall opposite and made a movement as though to call Mackenzie. Then he drew back and waited. A numbness crept into his legs, and it seemed to him to deaden all his power. After awhile the seizure passed and he stumbled over to the apothecary's room, and he began to measure out the old prescription of the morphia and calomel and white sugar. What was the good of calling Mackenzie when Mackenzie could do nothing more for him than he could do for himself? Then he went into an empty room kept for emergency cases at the end of the building, and flung himself down.
After awhile the deadly nausea returned and he sat up and crawled to his feet, and went back to the apothecary's room and measured out the prescription again—three hours was the limit between doses, and his watch said that the three hours had passed. He believed the watch had lied, and that it was thirty hours instead.
Mackenzie opened the door and stood transfixed on the threshold. Trevelyan conscious of the movement turned and started violently.
"What are you doing?" Mackenzie's voice was terrible in its hardness.
Trevelyan held up the scales with a trembling hand, and he made an odd sound in his throat that was intended for a laugh.
"Measuring morphia! What do you suppose?"
Mackenzie came up close to him, and his horror-stricken eyes looked straight into Trevelyan's sunken ones.
"Who for?"