the chair by the bed. She did not attempt to stroke the
hand near her, and she smothered whatever emotion she felt, for she knew
the man who had returned.

"Your mother?" said Berselius, who had just sufficient voice to convey
interrogation as well as words.

"She has not returned yet; we telegraphed for her, she will be here
to-day."

"Ah!"

The sick man turned his head again, and fixed his eyes on the tree tops.

The hot, pure, morning air came through the open window, bringing with it
the chirruping and bickering of sparrows; a day of splendour and great
heat was breaking over Paris. Life and the joy of life filled the world,
the lovely world which men contrive to make so terrible, so full of
misery, so full of tears.

Suddenly Berselius turned his head, and his eyes found Adams with a not
unkindly gaze in them.

"Well, doctor," he said, in a voice stronger than the voice with which he
had spoken to Maxine. "This is the end of our hunting, it seems."

Adams, instead of replying, took the hand that was lying on the coverlet,
and Berselius returned the pressure, and then relinquished his hold.

Just a handshake, yet it told Adams in some majestic way, that the man on
the bed knew that all was up with him, and that this was good-bye.

Berselius then spoke for a while to Maxine on indifferent things. He did
not mention his wife's name, and he spoke in a cold and abstracted voice.
He seemed to Adams as though he were looking at death, perfectly serenely,
and with that level gaze which never in this world had been lowered before
man or brute.

Then he said he was tired, and wished to sleep.

Maxine rose, but the woman in her had to speak. She took the hand on the
coverlet, and Berselius, who was just dozing off, started awake again.

"Ah!" said he, as though he had forgotten something, then he raised the
little hand of Maxine and touched it with his lips.

Then he asked that his wife should be sent to him on her return.

Alone, he closed his eyes and one might have fancied that he slept, yet
every now and then his eyelids would lift, and his eyes, unveiled by
drowsiness, would fix themselves on some point in the room with the intent
gaze of a person who is listening; so in the forest, or on the plain, or
by the cane brake had he often listened at night, motionless, gun in hand
and deadly, for the tiger or the water buck.

Half an hour passed and then from the adjoining room came a footstep, the
door ope