"You see? He will do as I tell him!"
And there was something in her defiant attitude, the ardor of a woman fiercely defending her own, which convinced him that she had the right to stay.
At eight o'clock the next morning she returned to her room, a cloak which Clarice Stuart had brought thrown over her garments of the reveling night. Yet, keenly buoyed up by the sense of ministering, she had no sense of fatigue. She had been at Lindaberry's bedside constantly, combating the delirium that seized upon him in abrupt gusts of fury. And in these moments of frantic wanderings, as he tossed helplessly before the stalking phantoms that rose out of the grim yesterday, when real and unreal went rocking through his tortured brain, no other hand but hers could control him. He seemed to know the moment she slipped noiselessly away, turning convulsively, stretching out his arm, querulously summoning her back. She obeyed, untired, willing, rapturously content.
Rogers, the valet, in the next room; Clarice Stuart, in her blue and white nurse's dress, silently in a corner; Doré, in pink and white evening gown, buckled satin slippers, with the odor of tired flowers still at her breast, sat endlessly, her eyes on the restless tormented head and the twitching lips that were never still, listening to incoherent phrases that still had intelligence for her.
What an inferno of desperation and defeat rose shapelessly about her! Through what dark corners of despair had he blundered in these last days! Sometimes, across the horror and the anguish of his mutterings, she heard her name called in a voice that rent her heart. But she thought no more of herself, only of the quiet that she must enforce on him; and quietly, smiling in the dark, she repeated in a gentle voice:
"I am here, Garry—Dodo; I am taking care of you! Try to sleep! No—I won't leave you!"
The hours rang from some unseen clock, and in the end the paling dawn filtered across the white roofs of Christmas morning. Clarice Stuart, noiseless as a shadow, rose and extinguished the useless candle. Some one touched her on the shoulder. It was Doctor Lampson, his finger on his lips. She glanced at the bed, slowly disengaging her hand. Lindaberry had fallen at last into a profound sleep, his hand clutching the bedspread, his head still impulsively turned toward her.
"No, I won't leave you."