h it."

Notwithstanding his appearance, the nurse obeyed: she knew the doctor
required brandy, but had lost her presence of mind.

Polwarth took his hand. The pulse had vanished--and no wonder! Once
more, utterly careless of himself, had the healer drained his own
life-spring to supply that of his patient--knowing as little now what
that patient was to him as he knew then what she was going to be. A
thrill had indeed shot to his heart at the touch of her hand, scarcely
alive as it was, when first he felt her pulse; what he saw of her
averted face through the folded shadows of pillows and curtains both of
window and bed, woke wild suggestions; as he bared her arm, he almost
gave a cry: it was fortunate that there was not light enough to show the
scar of his own lancet; but, always at any critical moment
self-possessed to coldness, he schooled himself now with sternest
severity. He insisted to himself that he was in mortal danger of being
fooled by his imagination--that a certain indelible imprint on his brain
had begun to phosphoresce. If he did not banish the fancies crowding to
overwhelm him, his patient's life, and probably his own reason as well,
would be the penalty. Therefore, with will obstinately strained, he kept
his eyes turned from the face of the woman, drawn to it as they were
even by the terror of what his fancy might there show him, and held to
his duty in spite of growing agony. His brain, he said to himself, was
so fearfully excited, that he must not trust his senses: they would
reflect from within, instead of transmitting from without. And
victoriously did he rule, until, all the life he had in gift being
exhausted, his brain, deserted by his heart, gave way, and when he
turned from the bed, all but unconscious, he could only stagger a pace
or two, and fell like one dead.

Polwarth got some brandy into his mouth with a teaspoon. In about a
minute, his heart began to beat.

"I must open another vein," he murmured as if in a dream.

When he had swallowed a third teaspoonful, he lifted his eyelids in a
dreary kind of way, saw Polwarth, and remembered that he had something
to attend to--a patient at the moment on his hands, probably--he could
not tell.

"Tut! give me a wine-glass of the stuff," he said.

Polwarth obeyed. The moment he swallowed it, he rose, rubbing his
forehead as if trying to remember, and mechanically turned toward the
bed. The nurse, afraid he might not yet know what he was about