She re-entered the hut, flung off her bonnet and cloak, and approached
the sufferer. He had begun anew those terrible mutterings, and his
hands were cold. As soon as she saw him there returned to her that
agony of mind which the stimulus of her journey had thrown off for a
time.
Could he really be dying? She bathed him, kissed him, forgot all things
but the fact that lying there before her was he who had loved her more
than the mere lover would have loved; had martyred himself for her
comfort, cared more for her self-respect than she had thought of
caring. This mood continued till she heard quick, smart footsteps
without; she knew whose footsteps they were.
Grace sat on the inside of the bed against the wall, holding Giles's
hand, so that when her husband entered the patient lay between herself
and him. He stood transfixed at first, noticing Grace only. Slowly he
dropped his glance and discerned who the prostrate man was. Strangely
enough, though Grace's distaste for her husband's company had amounted
almost to dread, and culminated in actual flight, at this moment her
last and least feeling was personal. Sensitive femininity was eclipsed
by self-effacing purpose, and that it was a husband who stood there was
forgotten. The first look that possessed her face was relief;
satisfaction at the presence of the physician obliterated thought of
the man, which only returned in the form of a sub-consciousness that
did not interfere with her words.
"Is he dying--is there any hope?" she cried.
"Grace!" said Fitzpiers, in an indescribable whisper--more than
invocating, if not quite deprecatory.
He was arrested by the spectacle, not so much in its intrinsic
character--though that was striking enough to a man who called himself
the husband of the sufferer's friend and nurse--but in its character as
the counterpart of one that had its hour many months before, in which
he had figured as the patient, and the woman had been Felice Charmond.
"Is he in great danger--can you save him?" she cried again.
Fitzpiers aroused himself, came a little nearer, and examined
Winterborne as he stood. His inspection was concluded in a mere
glance. Before he spoke he looked at her contemplatively as to the
effect of his coming words.
"He is dying," he said, with dry precision.
"What?" said she.
"Nothing can be done, by me or any other man. It will soon be all
over. The extremities are dead already." His eyes still remained
fixed on her; the conclusion to which he had come seeming to end his
interest, professional and otherwise, in Winterborne forever.