"Unless you want to kill her," had said the doctor. As the words had been spoken Sir Arthur looked quickly at her whom he had called wife. "Better she should die," thought he. The whole measure of his love for the woman in whose beauty he had gloried was in that mean thought. Better she should die, since her existence was no longer an honour but a shame to him, Sir Arthur. He had loved her as part of himself; no longer his, what was she to him? Nothing more than the amputated limb to its owner, a thing to hide out of sight with all speed, a thing to bury away. "I beg of you again," resumed Dr. Châtelard, in tones of restrained impatience; "I can have no one remain." A couple of servant girls, who stood huddled whispering in their corner, slid away one after the other. Lady Aspasia, by some moral force and a good deal of muscular pressure, succeeded in dragging the protesting Sir Arthur in their wake. The doctor looked at old Mary—she dropped her curtsey. "I might be of use, sir." He considered her a second in silence. "You may stay," he said. "And I?" said Aspasia, her pallid tear-stained face was thrust pleadingly forward. "You will do better to go, my child," said the Frenchman, paternally. "Doctor ... she will not die?" "Assuredly not this night at least," he replied, evasive yet consoling. From the door she flung back a piteous look at English, and once again his eyes answered her: "She will not die." Harry English took the last unextinguished candle and laid it on the floor. Outside, the yellow grey dawn was breaking. "I want hot bottles," ordered Dr. Châtelard of Mary; and when she had left the room, he turned to the strange man who had called himself Lady Gerardine’s husband. "You, too, sir," he said. "You must leave us." Harry English started. For the first time, that evening, discomposure laid hold of him. "I? ... but I cannot go. She will want me." "My dear sir," said the other, his tone softening into compassion (here was one who loved as few love, or he knew not how to read countenances), "this affair is very strange, but I, as doctor, am here to judge of nothing but the good of my patient. She has had a shock, and the shock has been caused by you. I repeat, all I can do here is to aid nature—nature demands repose. She is as one who has had concussion of the brain. That brain must rest. Call her back to thought, you may call her to death." "I would sit in a corner of the room—she would not know." "Ah," said the doctor, "one never can tell. That is a fallacy I have long since seen through. So long as the soul is there, my dear sir, many things take place inside the body that we know naught of." Then Harry English submitted. He went forth with bent head.... He who had waited so long! lint, even as Aspasia had done, he halted to question: "If she comes to consciousness?" "She will not come to consciousness, perhaps, for days." "If she wants me——?" "My dear sir—immediately, of course."