EVA
Philip dropped into an armchair. His forehead was bathed in perspiration. He was seized with a convulsive trembling, caused by the rage that he felt at not being able to avenge there and then the outrageous conduct of General Sabaroff towards his wife. If he had known at that moment where to find the Russian, he would have gone straightway and had it out with him. He went through a torment of impotent fury and disappointment at thinking that his arrival had been but a few moments too late.
"Fool that I was!" he cried, "what have I done? Then Dora thinks"—he dared not utter his thought—"and, if so, I am guilty in her mind of the vilest, the most despicable act that a man can commit—it is a frightful idea! And yet my indifference, my insistence that Dora should receive that man, when she implored me not to oblige her to submit to his company—Sabaroff loves her still then? Or does he, too, believe that he was encouraged by me? Oh, but the thought is horrible! The idea of it is maddening. Fool that I have been!"
For the first time he saw the enormity of his conduct. He called himself coward and criminal. In that dreadful hour he awoke from his dream and became himself again. The veil fell from his eyes, the transformation was complete. To do him justice there was no more inventor, no more blindly ambitious seeker after wealth, but the Philip of former days with no thought but for Dora. He would have given, that night, his last farthing for a smile from her!
Philip rose suddenly from his seat. He must take a resolution on the spot. He was face to face with a vital crisis on which all his future life depended. His first impulse was to go to Dora and throw himself at her feet to implore her pardon. "No," he said to himself, "as long as that contract exists, there is nothing to be done." He held it in his hands, that paper which had cost Dora so much. It burned to the touch. He looked at it twice, and he read it through. His mind was at once made up—tear up the thing, and fling it in the face of Sabaroff!
During this time there was much movement, much sound of coming and going on the staircase and in the hall. Suddenly Philip recognised the voice of Dr. Templeton saying, "It is the only way to save her, at least the only hope." Upon this a servant came rapidly downstairs, and Philip stopped him in the hall to ask—
"Where are you going?"
"To St. George's Hospital," was the reply.
"For Miss Eva? Is she worse?"
"Yes, sir; it appears that they are going to perform tracheotomy," said the man, who had heard the word and repeated it correctly.