A pale blue silk scarf was found, and ruthlessly utilised as a bandage. Then Emile lifted the inert figure, while the doctor wound it round her throat and fastened it securely.
"Lift her higher, man," he adjured Emile.
"There's only one pillow?—Then use this." He rolled up his coat, and put it behind her head.
"We've done all we can now, and must just wait till this begins to draw. It will make her uncomfortable, and we must watch that she doesn't pull it off. Give me a cigarette if ye have one, Poleski. 'Tis hot work this."
He sat down on the bed and took up Arithelli's thin wrist. In his shirt sleeves, with his hair well on end, and his robust voice very little subdued below its usual pitch, Michael did not convey the impression that he was capable of taking either Life or Death in a serious spirit. He talked on gaily, in no way depressed by his unsympathetic audience, telling tales of his own escapades in the matter of fighting and love-making, of wild midnight steeplechases ridden across unknown country, and the delights of the fair town by the river Lee.
Once he stopped talking for a few minutes to boil some more water on the stove that Arithelli sometimes used for making coffee, and to renew the application of leaves. The fact that his patient was in exactly the same condition of stupor, and had not stirred, did not discourage Michael's optimistic views of her recovery.
"Ye must give it time, me bhoy," he told Emile. "There's no hurry in Spain, ye know, with anything. Be careful that ye watch her and keep her hands off her throat. She'll not be lying so quiet presently."
Emile growled out an inaudible response. He was in a smouldering condition of wrath and impatience. Reserved and limited of words as he himself always was, and now rendered savage by anxiety, he found it impossible to understand the other man's mercurial temperament. By this time he was without hope, and certainly without faith in either Michael or his remedies.
The doctor having skilfully extracted his crumpled outer garment from under Arithelli's shoulders, regretfully prepared to depart. He was obliged to be somewhere about the premises of the Hippodrome during every performance in case of accident to any of the animals, and careless as he was where his own benefit was concerned, he had sufficient wisdom to be always within call.
When he had vanished Emile walked to the window, and threw open the now useless shutters. He guessed instinctively that Arithelli needed more air, and he had himself begun to find the temperature almost unbearable, for the building was lofty, and the room they were in near the roof. He rested his folded arms upon the sill and leaned his head and shoulders far out.