Time sped. The silver table-clock, the clock upon the mantelshelf, and the grandfather clock in the corner, ran a race with the chronometer in the pocket of the sleeping man. The brilliant unwavering circle of electric light did not reach the face of the Dop Doctor. It bathed his hands, that hung lax over the arms of the Sheraton chair, and tipped his lifted chin, leaving the strong brow and closed eyes in shadow. But as the pale glimmer of dawn began to outline the edges of the blinds and stretched at length a broad, pointing finger across the quiet room, the sleeping face showed greyish pale and luminous as a drawing by Whistler in silver-point.
The dawn had not rested on it long before there came a knock upon the panel of the consulting-room door. It was so faint and diffident a knock, no wonder it passed unheeded. Then the door opened timidly, and a slender figure in pale flowing draperies of creamy embroidered cashmere stole upon small, noiseless, slippered feet over the thick Turkey carpet.
It was Lynette. She had risen from her bed, and looked out from the landing into the hall below, and, seeing the light of the unextinguished lamp shining under the lintel of the consulting-room door, had stolen timidly down to ask Owen's pardon. Why had she behaved so badly? She could not explain. Only she was sorry. She must tell him so. His name was upon her lips, when she saw the Dop Doctor sleeping in his chair.
Breathlessly silent, she crossed the room to his side. And then—it was to her as though she looked upon her husband's face for the first time.
There was no stain of his secret excess upon it—no bloating of the features. You would have said this was a sane and strong and temperate man, upon whom the mighty brother of all-conquering Death had come, like one armed, and overthrown in the heat and stress of the life-battle. Only the sorrow of a suffering soul was written as deeply on that pale mask of human flesh as though the sculptor-slaves of a Pharao, dead seven thousand years agone, had cut it with tools of unknown, resistless temper in the diamond-hard Egyptian granite.
He breathed deeply and evenly, and not a muscle twitched as Lynette bent over and looked at him. A mass of her red-brown hair, heavy with the weight of its own glossy luxuriance, slipped from her half-bared bosom as she leaned over him, and fell upon his breast. A sudden blush burned over her as it fell. He never stirred. But as though the rod of Moses had touched the rock in Horeb, one slow tear oozed from between Saxham's black fringed, close-sealed eyelids, and hung there, a burnished, trembling point of steely light. And the deep, still, manly anguish of his face cried out to the reawakening womanhood in Lynette, and a strange, new, overwhelming emotion seized and shook her as a stream of white and liquid fire seemed to pass into her veins and mingle with her blood.
She began to understand, as she pored, with beating heart and bated breath, upon the living page before her eyes.
In its reticence and lonely strength of endurance, that face of Saxham's pleaded with her. In its stern acceptance of suffering and disappointment for Saxham, in its rugged confrontation of the inevitable; in its resolute long-suffering and grim patience; in its silent abnegation of any claim upon her gratitude or any right to demand her tenderness, the face was more than eloquent to-night. In the pride that would never stoop to beg for pity—would rather die hungered than accept one crumb of grudged and measured love; in its secret, inscrutable, unyielding loyalty to that promise given to a dead man; in the nobility of its refusal to shine brighter in its faith and truth and chivalry by the revelation of that other man's mean baseness; in its almost paternal solicitude; in its agony of love for her, insensible and careless; in the sick despair that had given up and left off hoping: even in the pride that had—or so it seemed to her—asserted itself at the last, and said, "I have left off crying for the moon; I wish for your love no longer!"—it pleaded—pleaded.... Words struggled for answering utterance in her, but none came.... She leaned nearer, drawn by an irresistible fascination, and laid her lips lightly upon the broad white forehead, with the bar of black meeting eyebrow smudged across it, and then, with a sudden leap and thrill, she knew....
All that had been in the past went for nothing. Only this man mattered who sat sleeping in the chair. How easy to awaken him with a touch, and tell him all! She dared not, though she longed to.
He was her master as well as her mate. When he had said to her that he had ceased to care, his eyes had given his words the lie. He had looked at her.... She shivered deliciously at the recollection of that look. If he were to open those stern, ardent eyes now, he would know her his. His—all his, to deal with as he chose!... His alone!