“He was lying where I had left him, still breathing heavily; his skin was icy cold, so I covered him over with the quilt from my own room, knowing that it was no use attempting to get him into bed, and feeling, in a sympathetic way, that he would prefer to be left alone. I went to get what remedies I could from our medicine-chest downstairs, and as I was doing this my eye fell on his little cupboard where behind glass doors he kept his precious shards, all labelled and docketed in his inhumanly neat handwriting, and I wondered whether, in a week or so, I should see him sitting down there, fingering his treasures with hands that, always thin, would surely be shrunken then to the claws of a skeleton. “It’s bad enough to see any man in extreme agonies of pain, but when the man is an uncommunicative, efficient, self-reliant creature like MacPherson it becomes ten times worse. I felt that a devil had deliberately set himself to tear the seals from that sternly repressed personality. MacPherson, who had always assumed a mask to disguise any human feelings he may have had, was here forced, driven, tortured into the revelation of ordinary mortal weakness. I believe that, even through the suffering which robs most men of all vestiges of their self-respect, he felt himself to be bitterly humiliated. I believe that he would almost have preferred to fight his disease alone in the wilderness. Yet I could not leave him. He was crying constantly for water, which I provided, and besides this there were many services to render, details of which I will spare you. I sat by the window with my back turned to him whenever he did not need me, glad to spare him what observation I could, and glad also, I confess, to spare myself the sight of that blue, shrivelled face, tormented eyes, and of the long form that knotted and bent itself in contortions like the man-snake of a circus.... His courage was marvellous. He resolutely stifled the cries which rose to his throat, hiding his face and holding his indrawn breath until the spasm had passed. “I knew that this stage of the disease would probably continue for two or three hours, when the man would collapse, and when the pain might or might not be relieved. The sun was high in the heavens when I noticed the first signs of exhaustion. MacPherson sank rapidly, and the deadly cold for which I was watching overcame him; I covered him with blankets—this he feebly resisted—and banked him round with hot water bottles, of which we always kept a supply in case of emergency. It was now midday, and I had continually to wipe the sweat from my face, but I could not succeed in bringing much warmth to poor MacPherson. He lay quiet and silent now, save when the fearful sickness returned, as it did at short intervals. I sat beside him, ready with the water for which he was continually asking.