Trevelyan slept for two hours—heavily, exhaustively; then Mackenzie woke him.
"Come," he said, briefly, "Stewart's worse."
Trevelyan sat up on the lounge and flung back his head; through his being thrilled the old lost defiance; the old lost strength. He went into Stewart's room and sat down by the bed.
The long hours crept away and the still shadows of night gathered, and through the hours and the shadows Mackenzie and Trevelyan watched. Stewart continued to sink.
At midnight, Mackenzie went over to the window, turning his back on the bed and Trevelyan.
There was no hope—but Trevelyan wouldn't believe it! Stewart was dying, and Trevelyan obstinately refused to relinquish the fight. Trevelyan didn't know when he was beaten. And Mackenzie, grown prematurely gray in the service of life against death, wondered all over again why human strength is so weak when waged against the great, mute Force of the world.
Trevelyan sat rigid; and he gathered all the strength of his life and his love; and that imperishable part that had been crushed by his crime, but not destroyed, and turned them to the conquering of this hour, and that grim Presence that was drawing nearer.
He had ceased to think of himself and the future for the first time since he had fallen. If it ever once occurred to him, he regarded it vaguely and indifferently. To-morrow, he would wake up to the living death that lay before him, but for the present, he had no thought beyond the still, motionless form stretched on the bed. He concentrated all his passion, all his will strength, and massed them together, as a breastwork, around Stewart's ebbing life.
The grasp of the hand that was clasping his grew weaker.
Trevelyan did not think to call Mackenzie. He had forgotten he was over there by the window; that they three, Stewart and Death and he, Trevelyan, were not alone together. He forced stimulant between Stewart's blue lips. And then he went in search of Stewart's ebbing life, as a swimmer goes down into the depths to bring forth a living man, drowning.