The confrontation bristled with omen.
CHAPTER IV.
"I do not know what witchcraft's in him."
Had he been put upon the rack Loyd Morton would still have been unable to give any coherent account of his vigil at the bedside of Romaine Effingham. Four hours had elapsed from the moment that he closed the chamber-door until, upon the stroke of midnight, it opened to admit Colston Drummond. Reflection failed to assist him to any satisfactory explanation regarding the flight of the time. He was morally certain that he had not lost an instant in slumber, the tension upon his mind would be almost proof positive that he could not have lapsed into unconsciousness; and yet the span seemed a complete void as he looked back upon it.
Romaine still lived; indeed her hold upon vitality had visibly strengthened since Morton's advent, yet, so far as his cognizance of the phenomenon went, Nature unassisted had taken the resurrection into her own hands. Resurrection was Morton's estimate of the miracle, since every token of immediate dissolution was present in the appearance of his patient when first he bent over her. The eyes were glazed, the flesh clammy, and the pulsations imperceptible. The extremities were cold with that peculiar chill which is so eloquent to the practised touch. Death's conquest was imminent, perhaps assured, and he had done nothing to avert the dread consummation—nothing save to murmur the name of one which embodied, for him, the quintessence of existence here and hereafter.
"Paula!" he had murmured, half tentatively, half mechanically.
It must have been the result of sorcery if simply at the utterance of that name Death furled his pale flag and left the field to his erstwhile routed opponent. Yet such was the case, as the physician's keen senses promptly detected. The young man experienced a thrill second to none that as yet he had encountered in his professional career, as upon his finger-tips came the delicate flutter of the pulse, while to his eager sight followed a gentle upheaval of the breast that sent a quivering sigh to his listening ear.
It was a supreme moment to Loyd Morton.
Naturally his first impulse was to apply some restorative and thus assist resuscitation. There was brandy at hand, a small quantity of which he inserted, drop by drop, between the parted lips. The effect produced seemed magical; the respiration became steady, a delicate glow crept into the wan cheeks, while a genial warmth attended by that most encouraging of symptoms, a dew-like moisture, relaxed the cold rigidity of the hands that returned the faintest possible pressure as they rested in the young doctor's clasp. Every token of convalescence by degrees made itself manifest and progressed until the soft gray eyes unclosed, instinct with crescent intelligence.
The watcher bent eagerly so that his countenance should fill the field of her vision, so that her awakening consciousness should grasp his personality to the exclusion of all other objects. Apparently the unpremeditated act met with flattering success, in that Romaine Effingham's first utterance framed his name.