n't you?"

Maxwell Wyndham seated himself with characteristic deliberation of
movement. He had fiery red hair that shone brazenly in the lamplight.

"I can't eat by myself, Sir Piers," he remarked, after a moment. "And it
isn't particularly good for you to drink without eating either, in your
present frame of mind."

Piers sat down, his attitude one of intense weariness. "You really think
she'll pull through?" he said.

"I think so," Wyndham answered. "But it won't be a walk over. She will be
ill for a long time."

"I'll take her away somewhere," said Piers. "A quiet time at the sea
will soon pick her up."

Maxwell Wyndham said nothing.

Piers glanced at him with quick impatience. "Don't you advise that?"

The green eyes countered his like the turn of a swordblade. "Certainly
quiet is essential," said Wyndham enigmatically.

Piers made a chafing movement. "What do you mean?"

"I mean," very calmly came the answer, "that if you really value your
wife's welfare, you will let someone else take her away."

It was a straight thrust, and it went home. Piers flinched sharply. But
in a moment he had recovered himself. He was on guard. He looked at
Wyndham with haughty enquiry.

"Why do you say that?"

"Because her peace of mind depends upon it." Wyndham's answer came with
brutal directness. "You will find, when this phase of extreme weakness
is past, that your presence is not desired. She may try to hide it from
you. That depends upon the kind of woman she is. But the fact will
remain--does remain--that for some reason best known to yourself, she
shrinks from you. I am not speaking rashly without knowledge. When a
woman is in agony she can't help showing her soul. I saw your wife's
soul to-day."

Piers was white to the lips. He sat rigid, no longer looking at the
doctor, but staring beyond him fixedly at a woman's face on the wall that
smiled and softly mocked.

"What did she say to you?" he said, after a moment.

"She said," curtly Wyndham made reply,--"it was at a time when she
could hardly speak at all--'Even if I ask for my husband, don't
send--don't send!'"

"Yet you fetched me!" Piers' eyes came swiftly back to him; they shone
with a fierce glint.

But Wyndham was undismayed. "I fetched you to save her life," he said.
"There was nothing else to be done. She was in delirium, and nothing else
would calm her."

"And she wanted me!" said Piers. "She begged me to stay with her!"

"I know. It was a pa