Dr. Ramsay arrived cool and collected and went upstairs. Ted arrived in a terrible state of fuss and also went upstairs. Then the house reverted to its usual staid routine. The gong sounded at dressing-time, and, clad in due decorum, Ned dined alone in the huge red dining-room which looked like a big mouth ready to swallow him up. The footman, overlooked by the butler, handed him the courses gravely, the butler filled his glass with '98 Pomeroy. Ned had not asked for it this time, but it was considered the proper thing with sudden and serious illness in the house. And all the while he was thinking how little life and death would affect him, if all these things could be swept away, and he be indeed nothing more than Carlyle's forked radish with a consciousness. Then he smoked and read again till ten o'clock, when the footman, overlooked by the butler, brought the whisky and water into the library, and Dr. Ramsay came with it. "I shall want help," he said, "but I don't want to alarm him--her husband. She is as brave as possible, but he--so I thought you----" "Whom do you want?" asked Ned, going to the telephone. Dr. Ramsay named a London specialist, and Ned looked up quickly. "As bad as that?" he asked. "As bad as it can be, I'm afraid," replied the doctor. After the specialist had been summoned and duly bribed, there was nothing to do but sit and smoke again, since the memory of those beautiful eyes with the eternal hope of the world's immortality in them, haunted him beyond the cure of sleep. If he had been her husband, could he have done more, could he have felt more? The London man arrived about one o'clock, and Ned, after the slight bustle of his coming and going upstairs, heard no more noise. The house seemed to settle down into the usual silence of night. What was going on upstairs? Would she pass into the Unseen? Would she settle the question once and for all? It was just as the red October sunrise was beginning to glow through the trees of the park, that Ned, standing at the window to watch it, heard the click of the door handle behind him, and turned to see the London doctor, a tall man with eyeglasses and a stoop. "Well!" he said eagerly. "How is she?" "As well as can--ah--ah--be expected," said the specialist, who appeared to be afflicted with a stammer, "after such a very serious--ah--ah--operation as--ah--ah--was necessary to save the--the--the interesting patient's life. But--ah--ah--D.V. it is saved, and--and I need hardly say we--we have every reason to be thankful, even though the future is, or may be--of course----" Here Dr. Ramsay entered the room, and he turned to him. "I was just preparing Mr. Cruttenden for the--ah--possibility----"