A dream! Another dream of torture! Nay, no dream this time; he was awake. The unbelievable had happened. The grave had yawned and given out a living man. Harry English was alive. He had come back from the bourne whence no traveller returns, to claim his own—to claim his wife. As in a sudden vision, more vivid than any of his troubled fancies had been to-night, Bethune saw them in each other’s arms, and was himself stabbed through and through by daggers of fire—he, the man whose misery it was to love his friend’s wife! ... The dead had heard her call. He could see it all now, with horrible lucidity. All was clear to him. He himself had brought Lady Gerardine, the forgetful, back to the memory of her love. She had called, and Harry had come—from death. And here he stood, Harry English, looking into his friend’s eyes, reading his friend’s soul. Suddenly Bethune grew cold to the marrow. He would have given everything he had, his life by inches, to be able at that instant to veil those tell-tale eyes of his. But in vain; he could not drop the lids between them. At last, with a short laugh, Harry English turned away and released him, and Bethune covered his face with his hands. Oh life, more cruel than death! These two had been closer than brothers; it was eternity itself that was giving them back to each other. And thus did they meet! "Bethune," said he that had been the Pathan, in brief decided accents which once again whirled Raymond back to the hours when all had hung upon their leader in the crucial emergency, "there is no time for explanation. Every moment just now is precious. I must have this beard off—I want scissors, razors." As he spoke he tore his long coat from his back; he caught up the razors on the dressing-table with impatient hands. "Scissors, man, scissors! And for the Lord’s sake, give me some more light!" Bethune sprang out of bed as if he had indeed gone back to that past of which he had been dreaming and his commanding officer had called upon his services. No stranger scene had ever been enacted within the narrow limits of this antique room, nor one more fraught with vital significance: though here, perchance, life had been born, and from here, surely, life had departed. A silence as heavy as the last doom lay between the comrades; and every second as it passed was ticked off, it seemed, by Bethune’s heart. Death they had faced together often—it was at the test of life that friendship had faltered. Swiftly the glossy wings of the Pathan’s beard fell under the snipping blades. And when he had exhausted what aid he could render, Bethune sat on the edge of the bed and watched the passing of Saif-u-din and the rising of Harry English from the dead.