Cherry, her eyes on the study door, stood biting her fingers in frenzy. When from the sound of Martin's voice she realized that he was being hurt, she looked at Peter in agony. "Oh, why do they do that--why do they do that? Torturing him for nothing!" he heard her whisper. "Go in and--go in and do something!" she urged, incoherently. But the sounds had stopped, and there was a blessed interval of silence. The clock on the mantel sounded eight in swift, silvery strokes, and presently a sympathetic nurse came silently in with a tray holding two cups of hot soup. Cherry shut her eyes and shook her head. "Please, Cherry--you need it!" Peter pleaded, carrying her a smoking cup. She protested again with a gesture, looked wearily into his eyes, and drank the soup docilely, like a child. "You, too, Peter!" she said, suddenly rousing herself. Peter gulped down his own cupful, waved away the sandwiches that were on the tray, and took the chair opposite the one in which Cherry was sitting. The clock presently struck the half-hour, but neither spoke. Cherry's pallor, her air of fatigue and bewilderment, and the familiar setting of the old environment made her seem a child again. Peter watched her with a confused sense that the whole frightful day had been a dream. Once she looked up and met his eyes. "He can't live," she said in a whisper. "Perhaps not," Peter answered very low. Cherry returned to her sombre musing. "We didn't see this end to it, did we?" she said with a pitiful smile after a long while. "Oh, no--NO!" Peter said, shutting his eyes, and with a faint, negative movement of his head. "We wouldn't have had this happen--" Cherry began. Her lips trembled, her whole face wrinkled, and she put her hand across her eyes and pressed it there with a gesture of forlornness and sorrow that wrenched Peter's heart. Her tears began to fall fast. "Poor Cherry--if I could spare you all this!" he said, knotting his fingers and feeling for the first time the prick of bitter tears against his eyelids. "Oh, there is nothing you can do," she said faintly and wearily after a while. And she whispered, as if to herself, "Nothing--nothing--nothing!" Then there was silence again. The lamps burned softly; the fire sucked and flickered; a chilling air, full of autumn sadness, began to creep from the corners of the room. Peter's eyes moved over the backs of the old books, Dickens and Thackeray and the "Household Book of Verse," moved to the faded photograph of Cherry's mother on the mantel, a beautiful woman in the big sleeves of the late nineties. The doctors came back; there was a little stir and rearrangement as they seated themselves. "Any change?" Cherry asked, cautiously. "No change." Both men shook their heads. "Any--any hope?" she faltered. The physicians exchanged glances. No word was spoken, but the look in their faces, the faint narrowing of eyes and compressing of lips, gave her her answer. CHAPTER XXIII