he sick man, and
it reminded Byrne with grim force of a picture he had seen of three
wolves waiting for the bull moose to sink in the snows: they, also, were
waiting for a death. It seemed, indeed, as if death must have already
come; at least it could not make him more moveless than he was. Against
the dark wall his profile was etched by a sharp highlight which was
brightest of all on his forehead and his nose; while the lower portion
of the face was lost in comparative shadow.

So perfect and so detailed was the resemblance to death, indeed, that
the lips in the shadow smiled--fixedly. It was not until Kate Cumberland
shifted a lamp, throwing more light on her father, that Byrne saw that
the smile was in reality a forcible compression of the lips. He
understood, suddenly, that the silent man on the couch was struggling
terribly against an hysteria of emotion. It brought beads of sweat out
upon the doctor's tall forehead; for this perfect repose suggested an
agony more awful than yells and groans and struggles. The silence was
like acid; it burned without a flame. And Byrne knew, that moment, the
quality of the thing which had wasted the rancher. It was this acid of
grief or yearning which had eaten deep into him and was now close to his
heart. The girl had said that for six months he had been failing. Six
months! Six eternities of burning at the stake!

He lay silent, waiting; and his resignation meant that he knew death
would come before that for which he waited. Silence, that was the
key-note of the room. The girl was silent, her eyes dark with grief; yet
they were not fixed upon her father. It came thrilling home to Byrne
that her sorrow was not entirely for her dying parent, for she looked
beyond him rather than at him. Was she, too, waiting? Was that what gave
her the touch of sad gravity, the mystery like the mystery of distance?

And Buck Daniels. He, also, said nothing. He rolled cigarettes one after
another with amazing dexterity and smoked them with half a dozen Titanic
breaths. His was a single-track mind. He loved the girl, and he bore the
sign of his love on his face. He wanted her desperately; it was a hunger
like that of Tantalus, too keen to be ever satisfied. Yet, still more
than he looked at the girl, he, also, stared into the distance. He,
also, was waiting!

It was the deep suspense of Cumberland which made him so silently alert.
He was as intensely alive as the receiver of a wireless apparatus;