ed, her mind leapt back to the prospect of Amherst's
return. A whole month before he reached Lynbrook! He had instructed her
where news might find him on the way ... but a whole month to wait!

She looked at Wyant, and they read each other's thoughts.

"It's a long time," he said.

"Yes."

"But Garford can do wonders--and she's very strong."

Justine shuddered. Just so a skilled agent of the Inquisition might have
spoken, calculating how much longer the power of suffering might be
artificially preserved in a body broken on the wheel....

"How does she seem to you today?"

"The general conditions are about the same. The heart keeps up
wonderfully, but there is a little more oppression of the diaphragm."

"Yes--her breathing is harder. Last night she suffered horribly at
times."

"Oh--she'll suffer," Wyant murmured. "Of course the hypodermics can be
increased."

"Just what did Dr. Garford say this morning?"

"He is astonished at her strength."

"But there's no hope?--I don't know why I ask!"

"Hope?" Wyant looked at her. "You mean of what's called recovery--of
deferring death indefinitely?"

She nodded.

"How can Garford tell--or any one? We all know there have been cases
where such injury to the cord has not caused death. This may be one of
those cases; but the biggest man couldn't say now."

Justine hid her eyes. "What a fate!"

"Recovery? Yes. Keeping people alive in such cases is one of the
refinements of cruelty that it was left for Christianity to invent."

"And yet--?"

"And yet--it's got to be! Science herself says so--not for the patient,
of course; but for herself--for unborn generations, rather. Queer, isn't
it? The two creeds are at one."

Justine murmured through her clasped hands: "I wish she were not so
strong----"

"Yes; it's wonderful what those frail petted bodies can stand. The fight
is going to be a hard one."

She rose with a shiver. "I must go to Cicely----" The rector of Saint
Anne's had called again. Justine, in obedience to Mrs. Gaines's
suggestion, had summoned him from Clifton the day after the accident;
but, supported by the surgeons and Wyant, she had resisted his admission
to the sick-room. Bessy's religious practices had been purely
mechanical: her faith had never been associated with the graver moments
of her life, and the apparition of a clerical figure at her bedside
would portend not consolation but calamity. Since it was all-important
that her nervous stren