Elizabeth never turned her head. She heard his breathing deepen, until it was very slow and steady. There was no other sound except when an ember dropped. The light failed. Soon there was no light but the glow of the fire.
CHAPTER XII
THE GREY WOLF
I thought I saw the Grey Wolf’s eyes
Look through the bars of night;
They drank the silver of the moon,
And the stars’ pale chrysolite.
From star by star they took their toll,
And through the drained and darkened night
They sought my darkened soul.
David slept for a couple of hours, and that night he slept more than he had done for weeks. Next night, however, there returned the old strain, the old yearning for oblivion, the old inability to compass it. In the week that followed David passed through a number of strange, mental phases. After that first sound sleep had relieved the tension of his brain, he told himself that he owed it to the delayed action of the bromide Skeffington had given him. But as the strain returned, though reason held him to this opinion still, out of the deep undercurrents of consciousness there rose before him a vision of Elizabeth, with the gift of sleep in her hand. He passed into a state of conflict, and out of this conflict there grew up a pride that would owe nothing to a woman, a resistance that called itself reason and independence. And then, as the desire for sleep dominated everything, conflict merged into a desire that Elizabeth should heal him, should make him sleep. And all through the week he did not think of Mary at all. The craving for her had been swallowed up by that other craving. Mary had raised this fever, but it had now reached a point at which he had become unconscious of her. It was Elizabeth who filled his thoughts. Not Elizabeth the woman, but Elizabeth the bearer of that gift of sleep. But this, too, was a phase, and had its reaction.