erstood that he was doing his
best to give it. She suddenly remembered that he had no room to sleep
in. He must use Derek's. No! That, it appeared, was to be for her when
she came off duty. Felix was going to have an all-night sitting in the
kitchen. He had been looking forward to an all-night sitting for
many years, and now he had got his chance. It was a magnificent
opportunity--"without your mother, my dear, to insist on my sleeping."
And staring at his smile, Nedda thought: 'He's like Granny--he comes out
under difficulties. If only I did!'

The ice arrived by motor-cycle just before her watch began. It was some
comfort to have that definite thing to see to. How timorous and humble
are thoughts in a sick-room, above all when the sick are stretched
behind the muffle of unconsciousness, withdrawn from the watcher by
half-death! And yet, for him or her who loves, there is at least the
sense of being alone with the loved one, of doing all that can be done;
and in some strange way of twining hearts with the exiled spirit. To
Nedda, sitting at his feet, and hardly ever turning eyes away from his
still face, it sometimes seemed that the flown spirit was there beside
her. And she saw into his soul in those hours of watching, as one
looking into a stream sees the leopard-like dapple of its sand and
dark-strewn floor, just reached by sunlight. She saw all his pride,
courage, and impatience, his reserve, and strange unwilling tenderness,
as she had never seen them. And a queer dreadful feeling moved her that
in some previous existence she had looked at that face dead on a field
of battle, frowning up at the stars. That was absurd--there were no
previous existences! Or was it prevision of what would come some day?

When, at half past nine, the light began to fail, she lighted two
candles in tall, thin, iron candlesticks beside her. They burned without
flicker, those spires of yellow flame, slowly conquering the dying
twilight, till in their soft radiance the room was full of warm dusky
shadows, the night outside ever a deeper black. Two or three times his
mother came, looked at him, asked her if she should stay, and, receiving
a little silent shake of the head, went away again. At eleven o'clock,
when once more she changed the ice-cap, his eyes had still no lustre,
and for a moment her courage failed her utterly. It seemed to her
that he could never win back, that death possessed the room already,
possessed those candle-flames