st this pitiful display of absurdly
limited resources,--as the hosts of the Philistines against the little
army of Israel,--resistless laws of nature, incalculably far-reaching
forces, physical and spiritual, the interminable progression of cause
and effect.

Denny joined Lady Calmady at the table. The two women held brief
consultation. Then the housekeeper went round to the farther side of
the bed, and slipping her arm under the pillows gently raised Richard's
head and shoulders, while Katherine kneeling beside him held the spout
of the feeding-cup to his lips.

"Must I? I don't think I can manage it," he said, drawing away slightly
and closing his eyes.

But Katherine persisted.

"Oh! try to drink it," she pleaded, "never mind how little--only try.
Help me to keep you here just as long as I can."

The young man's glance steadied on to her once again, and his eyes and
lips smiled the same faint, wholly gracious smile.

"All right, my beloved," he said. "A little higher, Denny, please."

Not without painful effort and a choking contraction of the throat, he
swallowed a few drops. But the greater part of the draught spilt out
sideways, and would have dribbled down on to the pillows had not
Katherine held her handkerchief to his mouth.

Ormiston, who had been standing at the foot of the bed in the hope of
rendering some assistance, ground his teeth together with a
half-audible imprecation, and went slowly over to the fireplace again.
He had supposed himself as miserable as he well could be before. But
this incident of the feeding-cup was the climax, somehow. It struck him
as an intolerable humiliation and outrage that Richard Calmady,
splendid fellow as he was, gifted, high-bred gentleman, should, of all
men, come to this sorry pass! He was filled with impotent fury. And was
it this pass, indeed, he asked himself, to which every human creature
must needs come one day? Would he, Roger Ormiston, one day, find
himself thus weak and broken; his body--now so lively a source of
various enjoyment--degraded into a pest-house, a mere dwelling-place of
suffering and corruption? The young man gripped the high, narrow
mantel-shelf with both hands and pressed his forehead down between
them. He really had not the nerve to watch what was going forward over
there any longer. It was too painful. It knocked all the manhood out of
him. But for very shame, before those two calm, devoted women, he would
have broken down and wept.