their backs bending and whispering over a stove; Ethel and Milly
trudging scared through the nocturnal streets; Rose talking with demure
excitement to old Hawley in his aromatic surgery; John officiously
carrying kettles to and fro, and issuing orders to Bessie in the
passage; Leonora cast violently out of one whirlpool into another; and
some unknown expectant terrified pair wondering why the doctor, who had
been warned months before, should thus culpably neglect their urgent
summons. As he lay there so grim and derisive and solitary, so fatigued
with days and nights, so used up, so steeped in experience, and so
contemptuously unconcerned, he somehow baffled all the efforts of
blankets, cloths, and bags to make his miserable frame look ridiculous.
He had a majesty which subdued his surroundings. And in this room
hitherto sacred to the charming mysteries of girlhood his cadaverous
presence forced the skirts and petticoats on Milly's bed, and the
disordered apparatus on the dressing-table, and the scented soaps on the
washstand, and the row of tiny boots and shoes which Leonora had
arranged near the wardrobe, to apologise pathetically and wistfully for
their very existence.

'Is that enough mustard?' John inquired idly.

'Yes,' said Leonora.

She realised--but not in the least because he had asked a banal question
about mustard--that he was perfectly insensible to all spiritual
significances. She had been aware of it for many years, yet the fact
touched her now more sharply than ever. It seemed to her that she must
cry out in a long mournful cry: 'Can't you see, can't you feel!' And
once again her husband might justifiably have demanded: 'What have I
done this time?'

'I wish one of those girls would come back from Church Street,' he
burst out, frowning. 'They're here!' He became excited as he listened to
light rapid footsteps on the stair. But it was Rose who entered.

'Here's the medicine, mother,' said Rose eagerly. She was flushed with
running. 'It's chloric ether and nitrate of potash, a highly diffusible
stimulant. And there's a chance that sooner or later it may put him into
a perspiration. But it will be worse than useless if the hot
applications aren't kept up, the doctor said. You must raise his head
and give it him in a spoon in very small doses.'

And then Meshach impassively submitted to the handling of his head and
his mouth. He gurgled faintly in accepting the medicine, and soon his
temples and the