Back and forth he paced, his nails digging into his palms, his teeth cutting his lips, driven by the flame that could never be extinguished, never be satisfied. And all the while, he pictured her in his arms; he pictured her with his child at her breast.
Then, suddenly—and quite as plainly as if he were in the room—he saw Ted's child, and he staggered toward a chair and fell, sobbing, into it.
How long those horrible sobs shook him he did not know. He felt himself baffled, beaten, inconceivably tortured. He watched the gray morning steal into the room as one who has kept a death vigil beside his best-loved watches it. A new day had come, but there was no hope in it for him. There was no hope for him—though his days should be ever so many.
He fell asleep at last, sitting there in his uncomfortable chair, with the cold light of the dawn creeping over his haggard face, and he dreamed that Ted came into the room and said, "Sheila needs you. She needs you to keep alive her love for me." And in the dream, he answered, as he had really answered Mrs. Caldwell the day before, "There is nothing I would not do for her." So vivid was all this that when he opened his eyes and found Ted actually in the room, he was not in the least surprised.
"You left your door unlocked," Ted explained apologetically, "and I came on in. Mrs. Caldwell died in the night—and Sheila's gone to pieces. She's been asking for you. Would you mind going to her for a bit?"
"There's nothing I would not do for her!" replied Peter, in the words of his dream. And for an instant he thought he still dreamed.
"That's awfully good of you. You look done up, Burnett. But if you're equal to it, I'll be grateful to you."
As he gazed at Peter, whose face was gray still, though the morning light was now golden, Ted added to himself, "Poor chap! He's growing old." To him it would have been incredible that Peter's scars had been won in youth's own great battle—the battle with love. A certain complacency stole warmly through him then, ruddy and robust as he knew himself to be, a complacency that led him to lay a kindly, solicitous hand on the older man's shoulder; and so intent he was upon his self-satisfied kindliness that he did not see Peter wince at the touch.
"You do look done up, Burnett. Maybe I ought not to ask you——"
But Peter cut him short. "I'd do anything for Sheila," he repeated.