"I'm stifled," the patient gasped. "Are they--doing--all they can--for me?"--Richard tried to reassure him. "It's all over--with me--Larch--I can't--keep it up long--I'm going--going--they'll have to try--something else." His lustrous eyes were fastened on Richard with an appealing gaze. Richard turned away. "I'm frightened--I thought I shouldn't be--but I am. Doctor suggested parson--it's not that--I said no.... Do you think--I'm dying?" "Not a bit," said Richard. "That's a lie--I'm off.... It's a big thing,--death--everyone's afraid--of it--at last.... Instinct!... Shows there's something--awful behind it." If Richard had been murdering the man, he could not have had a sharper sense of guilt than at that moment oppressed him. Mr. Aked continued to talk, but with a growing incoherence which gradually passed into delirium. Richard looked at his watch. Only thirty minutes had slipped by, and yet he felt as if his shoulder had suffered the clutch of that hot hand since before the beginning of time! Again he experienced the disconcerting sensation of emotional horizons suddenly widened. People were walking down the street; they talked and laughed. How incongruously mirthful and careless their voices sounded! Perhaps they had never watched by a sick-bed, never listened to the agonised breathing of a pneumonia patient. That incessant frantic intake of air! It exasperated him. If it did not stop soon, he should go mad. He stared at the gas-flame, and the gas-flame grew larger, larger, till he could see nothing else.... Then, after a long while, surely the breathing was more difficult! There was a reverberating turmoil in the man's chest which shook the bed. Could Richard have been asleep, or what? He started up; but Mr. Aked clung desperately to him, raising his shoulders higher and higher in the struggle to inhale, and leaning forward till he was bent almost double. Richard hesitated, and then struck the bell. It seemed as if the nurse would never come. The door opened softly. "I'm afraid he is much worse," Richard said to the nurse, striving to cover his agitation. She looked at Mr. Aked. "Perhaps you had better fetch the doctor." When he returned, Mr. Aked was lying back unconscious. "Of course the doctor can do nothing now," said the nurse, calmly answering the question in his eyes. "He'll never speak any more." "But Miss Aked?" "It can't be helped. I shall say nothing to her till morning." "Then she won't see him?" "Certainly not. It would be madness for her to leave her bed." The doctor arrived, and the three talked quietly together about the alarming prevalence of influenza at that time of the year, and the fatal results of carelessness.