Annette stirred at last when a shaft of sunlight fell upon her head. She sat up stiffly, and stared round the unfamiliar chamber, with the low sun slanting across the floor and creeping up the bottom of the door. Nothing stirred. A chill silence made itself felt. The room seemed to be aware of something, to be beforehand with her. Some nameless instinct made her get up suddenly and go to the bed. Dick Le Geyt was lying on his back, with his eyes wide open. There was a mute appeal in his sharp-featured face, sharper featured than ever before, and in his thin outstretched hands, with the delicate nervous fingers crooked. He had needed help, and he had not found it. He had perhaps called to her, and she had not listened. She had been deaf to everything except herself. A sword seemed to pierce Annette's brain. It was as if some tight bandage were cleft and violently riven from it. She came shuddering to herself from out of the waking swoon of the last two days. Hardly knowing what she did, she ran out of the room and into the passage. But it must be very early yet. No one was afoot. What to do next? She must rouse some one, and at once. But whom? She was about to knock at the nearest door, when she heard a hurried movement within, and the door opened. A grey-haired woman in a dressing-gown looked out, the same whom she had seen the night before at dinner. "I thought I heard some one call," she said. "Is anything wrong?" Then, as Annette leaned trembling against the wall, "Can I be of any use?" Annette pointed to her own open door, and the woman went in with her at once. She hastened instantly to the bed and bent over it. She touched the forehead, the wrist, with rapid, business-like movements. She put her hand upon Dick's heart. "Is he dead?" asked Annette. "No," she said, "but he is unconscious, and he is very ill. It is some kind of seizure. When did your husband become like this?" "I--don't know," said Annette. The woman turned indignantly upon her. "You don't know! Yet surely you sat up with him? You look as if you had been up all night." "I sat up, but I did not look at him," said Annette. "I never thought he was ill." The elder woman's cheek reddened at the callousness of Annette's words, as at a blow. She was silent for a moment, and then said coldly-- "We have only one thing to think of now, and that is how to save his life, if it can be saved." And in a moment, as it seemed to Annette, the house was awakened, and a doctor and a Sister of Mercy appeared and were installed at Dick's bedside. After a few hours, consciousness came back intermittently; but Dick, so excitable the day before, took but little heed of what went on around him. When, at the doctor's wish, Annette spoke to him, he looked at her without recognition.