And then, remembering Stewart, the agony in his brain increased.
He fancied Stewart starting out on the mission, silent, with the silence that comes with the realization of danger—grave with the gravity of its acceptance—the test of courage. Stewart had never been guided by the heedless, passionate impulses that had possessed him, Trevelyan, all his life; but he had held high the standards of life for a man, and he had lived up to the standards.
Trevelyan fancied he saw him riding into the thickness of the black shadows.
He might do it, and come back from the jaws of death. If a man could do it, he would, but was it humanly possible?
Trevelyan beat his hands against his face. No; no man could do it! The Station would wait for Stewart, and wait and wait, and Stewart would not come. They would go to look for him and they would bring him back to him, Trevelyan—dead. But he would not look like the trooper. The vision on the wall had been a mistake.
Long ago, the night that Stewart had saved Cary as a child, by his vigil; he, Trevelyan, had crept into the room where they had carried him, and he was sleeping, exhausted. The peace, born of a great sacrifice and a purpose accomplished, had rested on the boy's face. The peace of it came back to Trevelyan, a gift from that dead year.
When they brought Stewart home to the Station he would look so.
And the minutes turned to hours and the fever increased, and later Trevelyan sank into a doze. The surgeons came in now and again and administered medicines of which he was only dimly conscious, and the fever and the drowsiness grew, and the long night wore away.
In the early dawn he was awakened by the feeling that someone was looking steadily at him. His eyes, free from the fever that had gone, met those of the assistant surgeon.
Before the full consciousness of the night's agony had come back, the young surgeon spoke.