"A friend of yours is coming to sit with you, Mr. Aked--you know Mr. Larch," he heard the nurse say; she was evidently busy about the bed. "You can go now, Lottie," she went on to the servant. "Wash up the things I have put in the sink, and then off to bed." Richard waited with painful expectancy for the voice of Mr. Aked. "Larch--did you say--why--didn't he come--before?" The tones were less unnatural than he had anticipated, but it seemed that only by the exercise of a desperate ingenuity could the speaker interject the fragments of a sentence here and there between his hurrying gasps. Then the servant went downstairs. "Come in, Mr. Larch," the nurse called pleasantly. The patient, supported by pillows, was sitting upright in bed, and as Richard entered he looked towards the door with the expression of an unarmed man on the watch for an assassin. His face was drawn and duskily pale, but on each cheek burned a red flush; at every cruel inspiration the nostrils dilated widely, and the shoulders were raised in a frenzied effort to fill the embarrassed lungs. "Well, Mr. Aked," Richard greeted him, "here I am, you see." He made no reply beyond a weak nod, and signed to the nurse for the feeding-cup of brandy and milk, which she held to his mouth. Richard was afraid he might not be able to stay in the room, and marvelled that the nurse could be unmoved and cheerful in the midst of this piteous altercation with death. Was she blind to the terror in the man's eyes? "You had better sit here, Mr. Larch," she said quietly, pointing to a chair by the bedside. "Here is the drink; hold the cup--so. Ring this bell if you want me for anything." Then she noiselessly disappeared. No sooner had he sat down than Mr. Aked seized his shoulder for support, and each movement of the struggling frame communicated itself to Richard's body. Richard suddenly conceived a boundless respect for the nurse, who had watched whole nights by this tortured organism on the bed. Somehow existence began to assume for him a new and larger aspect; he felt that till that moment he had been going through the world with his eyes closed; life was sublimer, more terrible, than he had thought. He abased himself before all doctors and nurses and soldiers in battle; they alone tasted the true savour of life. Art was a very little thing. Presently Mr. Aked breathed with slightly less exertion, and he appeared to doze for a few moments now and then, though Richard could scarcely believe that any semblance of sleep was possible to a man in his condition. "Adeline?" he questioned once. "She's getting on fine," Richard said soothingly. "Would you like a sip?" He put his grey lips clumsily round the lip of the cup, drank, and then pushed the vessel away with a gesture of irritation. The windows were open, but the air was perfectly still, and the gas burnt without a tremor between the windows and the door.