The door had opened and Dr. Warren came in. He had just laid down upon the coverlet of a bed upstairs what seemed to be the hand of a dying woman, and no man like himself can do such a thing and enter a room without a singular look on his face. People in a house of death inevitably whisper, whatsoever their remoteness from the sick-room. Lady Maria cried out in a whisper: "Is she still alive?" "Yes," was the response. Walderhurst went to him. "May I see her?" "No, Lord Walderhurst. Not yet." "Does that mean that it is not yet the last moment?" "If that moment had obviously arrived, you would be called." "What must I do?" "There is absolutely nothing to be done but to wait. Brent, Forsythe, and Blount are with her." "I am in the position of knowing nothing. I must be told. Have you time to tell me?" They went to Walderhurst's study, the room which had been Emily's holy of holies. "Lady Walderhurst was very fond of sitting here alone," Dr. Warren remarked. Walderhurst saw that she must have written letters at his desk. Her own pen and writing-tablet lay on it. She had probably had a fancy for writing her letters to himself in his own chair. It would be like her to have done it. It gave him a shock to see on a small table a thimble and a pair of scissors. "I ought to have been told," he said to Dr. Warren. Dr. Warren sat down and explained why he had not been told. As he spoke, interest was awakened in his mind by the fact that Lord Walderhurst drew towards him the feminine writing-tablet and opened and shut it mechanically. "What I want to know," he said, "is, if I shall be able to speak to her. I should like to speak to her." "That is what one most wants," was Dr. Warren's non-committal answer, "at such a time." "You think I may not be able to make her understand?" "I am very sorry. It is impossible to know." "This," slowly, "is very hard on me." "There is something I feel I must tell you, Lord Walderhurst." Dr. Warren kept a keen eye on him, having, in fact, felt far from attracted by the man in the past, and wondering how much he would be moved by certain truths, or if he would be moved at all. "Before Lady Walderhurst's illness, she was very explicit with me in her expression of her one desire. She begged me to give her my word, which I could not have done without your permission, that whatsoever the circumstances, if life must be sacrificed, it should be hers." A dusky red shot through Walderhurst's leaden pallor. "She asked you that?" he said. "Yes. And at the worst she did not forget. When she became delirious, and we heard that she was praying, I gathered that she seemed to be praying to me, as to a deity whom she implored to remember her fervent pleading. When her brain was clear she was wonderful. She saved your son by supernatural endurance." "You mean to say that if she had cared more for herself and less for the safety of the child she need not have been as she is now?" Warren bent his head.