The girl never flinched nor groaned as the probes went deep into the long slashes from shoulder to waist made by the lion's claws, nor when the forced-in linen was drawn out from the wound above her breast, nor when her broken arm was handled and set. Of all the great horrible pain she was suffering the men were given no sign to increase their difficulty and labour.
Everest at first held her hand and spoke to her, putting to her lips from time to time the liquid the doctor ordered, but when the wounds were clean it was his strong, slight hand that, without a quiver of the muscles, replaced as far as was possible the torn fragments of flesh and strips of skin exactly and perfectly in their place in the hope that they would grow again, reunite and join without a serious scar. The union of brain between these two was so complete that, though Regina had not uttered any word on the subject, to Everest it seemed as if her whole body, as it lay there so broken and wounded, was crying out to him: "My beauty, my beauty! Save that if you can for the sake of our love." And the doctor watched with surprise the admirable skill and infinite care with which he pieced all the satin surface together. Some of the places were too deep to be treated in any way but stitched up, and this the doctor did himself. Then they dressed and bandaged the whole of the back and shoulder and breast and set and bandaged the broken arm, and only at the very last Regina quietly fainted as Everest kissed her and told her it was finished.
When she recovered consciousness she passed almost immediately into a deep sleep. She was so very, very tired and everything was done now, and he was pleased with her, so nothing mattered and the sense of suffocating heat in the tent as the noon rays poured down on the canvas, the buzz of the flies, the sight of the instruments and basins and bandages, the long ache and smart of her whole body, all these were blotted out as the soft, velvet darkness of sleep enfolded her.
The doctor turned to Everest.
"Now you must turn in and take a rest. Out riding all last night and then four hours of this. Tell them to send in that extra little bed here and then get a good sleep. If you don't you'll be done up and no good to nurse her."
"But it's the same for you, doctor," rejoined Everest, smiling. He was standing erect at the foot of the bed, without any sign of fatigue. "You've been without sleep as long as I have; you want a rest."
"Oh, nonsense. I'm not leading the life you are and taking it out of myself all ways at once. I'll get that bed in and then off to sleep you go. When you wake up you can watch her and let me doze a bit." And he went out.
A little later, when he had seen his two patients, as he called them to himself—for the pallor and extreme mental distress of Everest's face told him that, unless there were some alleviation of the strain, physical collapse must follow—asleep in the big tent, he crossed the strip of fiery sand to the two little white ones opposite of Sybil and her brother. He entered the girl's and found her white and shivering in her bed with the rug drawn up to her neck. Merton was standing beside her.
"Why doesn't Everest come to see me?" Sybil asked directly the doctor appeared. "It was all so awful for me. He might have come."
"Mr. Lanark has not had a moment in which to think of anything but his wife and her suffering; he's been working with me there for her these last four hours, and now I've made him go to bed. He's utterly exhausted with it all," the doctor answered, with some asperity.