"I found her so when I came in. It was then eleven o'clock." "How long had she been alone?" "I went out at twenty minutes past ten. I went to have a tooth extracted. That was forty minutes." "Did she speak to you when you went out?" "Yes--she spoke to me." "What did she say?" Marshall Avery made no reply. "Were there any symptoms of this heart-failure then? Out with it!--No. Never mind. It's evident enough." The clock on the mantel struck the quarter before twelve. "She has been as she is an hour and a quarter," said Dr. Thorne. His voice and manner were disheartened. He stood a moment pondering, with a dark face. "Do you call her dead?" entreated Avery. It seemed to him that he had reached the limit of endurance. He would pull the worst down on his head at one toppling blow. "_No!_" cried the physician, in a deep, reverberating tone. "But is it death?" persisted Avery wildly. "I do not know," said Dr. Thorne. "Do you give her up?" "_No!_" thundered Dr. Thorne again. "The drowned have been resuscitated after six hours," he added between his teeth. "That's the latest contention." At this moment a messenger summoned by telephone from the corner pharmacy arrived, running, and pealed and thundered at the door. Some one laid upon the bed within the doctor's reach a small pasteboard box. He opened it in silence, and took from it a tiny crystal or shell of thin glass. This he broke upon a handkerchief, and held the linen cautiously to Jean's face. A powerful, pungent odor filled the room. Avery felt his head whirl as he breathed it. The doctor removed the handkerchief and scrutinized Jean's face. Neither hope nor despair could be detected on his own. Without a word he went to work again. Not discarding, but not now depending altogether on the aid of warmth, stimulants, and the remedies upon which he had been trained to rely in his duels with death, the physician turned the force of his will and his skill in the direction of another class of experiments. So far as he could, and at such disadvantage as he must, he put certain of the modern processes of artificial respiration to the proof. He did not allow himself to be hampered in this desperate expedient by an element of danger involved in lifting the patient's arms above her head; for Jean had passed far beyond all ordinary perils. Obstacles seemed to serve only to whip his audacity. His countenance grew dogged and grim. He worked with an ineffable gentleness, and with an indomitable determination that gave a definite grandeur to his bearing.