I do not recall now whether or not she resisted this treatment. I think she did, a little. But she was so completely exhausted, in body and spirit, by all she had gone through, that she really could do nothing but follow my instructions.
Then I rang for a boy—from my own room. It was getting pretty late in the evening; but I made him fetch me a large pot of black coffee.
I lifted her, and slipped the two pillows behind her that I had brought in from my own bed, and made her as nearly comfortable as I could. When the coffee came I poured out three cups of it, one after another, and stood over her while she drank them. She protested, every moment, but I paid no attention to her words, just held the cup to her lips until it was empty and then refilled it twice.
This done, I put the tray in my own room, and did what little I could to make her room more attractive to the eye. I moved the bureau from the hall door to its place against the side wall, the place it had occupied ever since she and I had moved it for the last time away from the door that connected our rooms. I even straightened out the various articles on the bureau.
And all this time I felt her great, weary eyes following me about, the room. She was distinctly relieved, I thought, at the sharp way in which I had taken command of her life. Poor child, she had tried hard enough to end that life. She had passed through the valley, of the shadow. And now, cheated yet relieved, she leaned on me.
Since that hour my mind has dwelt on the horrors she must have lived through that day. (She did not finally take the morphia until sometime after five in the afternoon.) She says nothing about the day; and of course I ask no questions. But she was there in her room through the noon hours and all the afternoon. And when I asked her if she slept at all the preceding night—the night that I sat up, without even undressing—she said no.... But I think it is better for me not to dwell on this.
I walked over to the window to let the night air in on her, and perhaps also to think.
Suddenly I recalled that there was a telephone downstairs. How stupid of me not to have thought of it before!
And Sir Robert had spoken of a physician at the British Legation. I should have remembered that! But on second thought, I could not bear to think of calling in Sir Robert's man.
However, medical advice of some sort I must have. I knew nothing of the action of morphia on the system. She might be sinking at this moment.