ring with the hum of a controlled activity.

She had known the sensation before--the transmuting of terror and pity
into this miraculous lucidity of thought and action; but never had it
snatched her from such depths. Oh, thank heaven for her knowledge
now--for the trained mind that could take command of her senses and bend
them firmly to its service!

Wyant seconded her well, after a moment's ague-fit of fear. She pitied
and pardoned the moment, aware of its cause, and respecting him for the
way in which he rose above it into the clear air of professional
self-command. Through the first hours they worked shoulder to shoulder,
conscious of each other only as of kindred will-powers, stretched to the
utmost tension of discernment and activity, and hardly needing speech or
look to further their swift co-operation. It was thus that she had known
him in the hospital, in the heat of his youthful zeal: the doctor she
liked best to work with, because no other so tempered ardour with
judgment.

The great surgeon, arriving from town at midnight, confirmed his
diagnosis: there was undoubted injury to the spine. Other consultants
were summoned in haste, and in the winter dawn the verdict was
pronounced--a fractured vertebra, and possibly lesion of the cord....

Justine got a moment alone when the surgeons returned to the sick-room.
Other nurses were there now, capped, aproned, quickly and silently
unpacking their appliances.... She must call a halt, clear her brain
again, decide rapidly what was to be done next.... Oh, if only the
crawling hours could bring Amherst! It was strange that there was no
telegram yet--no, not strange, after all, since it was barely six in the
morning, and her message had not been despatched till seven the night
before. It was not unlikely that, in that little southern settlement,
the telegraph office closed at six.

She stood in Bessy's sitting-room, her forehead pressed to the
window-pane, her eyes straining out into the thin February darkness,
through which the morning star swam white. As soon as she had yielded
her place to the other nurses her nervous tension relaxed, and she hung
again above the deeps of anguish, terrified and weak. In a moment the
necessity for action would snatch her back to a firm footing--her
thoughts would clear, her will affirm itself, all the wheels of the
complex machine resume their functions. But now she felt only the
horror....

She knew so well what was going on in